In a Citadel Darkly
by Archontor
Summary: Conspiracy grips the Citadel as politicians from a dozen worlds plot and plunder in secret. At the hands of two C-Sec Detectives lies what may be the only chance to drag them before the light.Rated M for murder,swearing and torture.Please read and review.
1. Chapter 1: Blood on the Stars

The Citadel, a melting pot for the diverse and exotic species from the slimly explored galaxy and bursting with merchants, academics and soldiers from Thessia to Tuchanka.

As of two weeks ago C-Sec Detectives Gadon and Agoriun had been in part responsible for maintaining the peace there until the latter's retirement. With the perfect memory afforded to all drell he remembered well the sweet scent of traditional turian sweet-cakes and the recorded sound of his favourite band ringing in his ear-nubs, not his type of music but an oddity he could afford.

The party had been one of celebration and in the traditional turian way, personal commendations were put into his old unit's chronicles, he passed on his side arm to his eldest child and other such things, rigid and formal, so like the rest of their traditions.

Despite his years working with and sometimes against turians he had never felt more out of place in his life.

Ever since he had joined C-Sec fresh from the academy the already experienced Agoriun had been his mentor, and after the death of his father somewhat more of a parental figure, though they never spoke of it but it was quite clear they both knew it.

He would miss long stakeouts and having him for cover fire. Though at the same time he knew well that Agoriun was happy with his little apartment on the Kithoi Wards with his wife and children.

Today however was the day Gadon received his knew partner. Awaiting the moment he sat at his sparse desk in the Zakera ward, with memory such as his photos and mementos were largely a waste of resources and he had similarly little use of notes unlike those that dotted his co-workers' desks. Aside from the single cup of Thessian tea that sat steaming on his desk it was almost plain as if it had only just been inhabited.

Theirs was a quiet work place, away from the main customs desk staffed by Commander Bailey their haggard leader. Theirs was a place of contrast, often quiet and calm yet with an atmosphere of adrenaline due to the constant struggle to maintain a grip on the wards. Numerous posters hung on the wall and various bits of stationary were stored tidily in the spotless room granting the illusion of a perfectly average office.

Sat across from him at their paired desks were Detectives Sadria and Feltrianus both from the Asari Commandos and proud of it by the medals on their desks, none the less he was quite an able mach in deduction if not combat.

Scratching at the striped scales of his stone blue skin he watched patiently at the small chronometer in the corner of his display. It was nine thirty five and he was told to expect Agoriun's 'replacement' at nine twenty.

As a punctual being he found such lateness rather annoying especially in others, a trait often mistaken for impatience. He waited a few more minutes as he typed up 'paperwork.' He was anxious to be on the streets though, last night he had gotten his newest assignment, investigating a murder on the docks.

And then the hatch retreated into the walls and ceiling presenting a pair of humans. It was strange to think that he perfectly remembered the day he was walking out of the Kithoi Institute from a lecture to see large displays reporting the rather fleeting conquest of Shanxi, and then to think that in a mere thirty years the hairless primates had gotten spectres and council members in Shepard and Udina respectively whereas his people were still just clients and refugees to an under appreciated race themselves.

He had read her file, a biotic from the Edinburgh Special Weapons and Tactics division and pushed through by Admiral Anderson, born lucky it would seem. All across the alliance military and law enforcement officials were prepared to lure in biotics with various pay benefits and the same happened in many citadel races. It irked him to no end that just because they had starship fuel in their brains they got fast tracked and promoted whilst the baseliners of the galaxy were passed over.

"Detective Gadon, meet your new partner." Bailey said in his grizzled and gravelly voice that reminded him a tad of his mother's, not that he was keen to say. "This is Detective Addison Sandoval, from the lower Bachjret precinct." He said as he walked in slowly and with confidence, as he did most things.

He stood and crossed the room to the humans with barely the noise of his synth-leather boots to give him away, barely audible in the silent room.

"Hi Gadon." she said in a strange accent he recognised from his time on one of the human colonies as Scottish. "You can call me Addie." she said politely as she stuck out a hand.

He remembered fondly his time on a human colony, following his parents' footsteps as a private security contractor before returning home to the citadel some eighteen years ago. The work had been well paying, with an experience of alien life and a compatible biology to humans he and many drell were naturally one of the better candidates for long term security. More than that they were quite culturally compatible, compared to the sterile and cultureless corporate cosmopolitan of the citadel he found the rich and diverse traditions of the various human nations as rather refreshing.

Gadon returned the gesture, his rough scales grating against her soft tan skin, vastly more malleable than the hard, plated scales, though he kept it short remembering the hallucinogenic reaction certain species experienced from prolonged contact.

"Hello Addie, pleased to meet you." He responded as politely as etiquette dictated and not a modicum more. He neglected to state his rather embarrassing first-name.

"Gadon will be getting you acquainted with Zakera." Bailey interjected.

"Speaking of we're already late." Gadon stated as he went over to the small, compartmentalised weapons lockers by the door and checked out his side arm, an M-6 Carnifex designed to take down even a charging krogan, as he had before.

Checking his utility belt for his equipment before setting out to the nearby parking bay, shifting through swirling crowds, from wealthy volus to elcor to krogan 'visitors' who cast him suspicious looks, no doubt as a result of his walking out of the C-Sec offices with his badge visible on his belt.

"Is he always like that?" Addison asked to his blue-skinned co-workers, as yet introduced only by the small name-bars on their desks.

"It's been a rough year for him." Sadria said in a soft, pleasant voice that seemed somewhat dissonant of her military prowess.

Following swiftly after him she kept track of his distinctive form, drell were rare and despite the literally colourful crowd of blue and violet asari, the greyish salarians and the dull beiges of turians along with her fellow humans.

None however were his exact shade of dull blue nor were they dressed as distinctively. The Detective's pointed tailcoats were fluttering and flapping against his jackbooted calves in the small breeze he generated from his movement. It was a beautiful coat though, rust red and panelled with silver whilst the interior was lined with intricate curls of Thessian silk.

She quickly hopped the barrier between the deck plated street and onto the parking bays.

He was already sat in the pilots seat of an X4M aero shuttle which exchanged space and passenger seats for a larger engine and a more compact size, perfect for any hot pursuits they might encounter.

She got in via the passenger side door witch swung in after her.

"So, what's Zakera Ward like?" she asked perkily as Gadon tapped diligently at the controls of the shuttle.

"I don't live here, what does that tell you." Gadon replied in deadpan. "But no, most of these are good people and you can go far from here." He added in a more tender intonation of guttural croak of a voice.

"So, what do you expect." She asked as she watched the whipping traffic out of the window.

"This is probably local mob work, they won't risk coming out in force unless they think we're getting too close." He replied.

"Would you mind taking over I need to attend to something he said as he activated the co-pilot's console.

As Addison handled the fairly simple practice of traffic navigation she could see Gadon out of the corner of his vision.

He had yanked off his left boot revealing the synthetic leg beneath, made of black synthetic muscle under a carbon fibre shell. He then proceeded to roll up the leg of his piped trousers which matched his red-brown coat up to his thigh, revealing the scared, stone blue flesh of his leg witch gave way to the permanently implanted bio-cybernetic interface that allowed him to control it. After flicking a few tabs he twisted it at an unnatural angle and then detached it.

He proceeded to scan it with his omni tool in one hand and the limb in the other whilst tutting at the readings. "Just what I thought, I must've forgotten to recalibrate this after I got out the shower." He said more to himself than his new partner.

"Oh, I didn't know you were missing a leg." Addison said as she caught a quick peek between her pilot's duties.

"It was the case before last, my old partner and I were breaking up an animal smuggling operation, a varren snuck up on me." He said with a slightly shaken tone in his voice.

"Isn't the rehab for those things more like a year." She asked in an enquiring tone as she turned back to face the traffic.

"I wasn't about to miss his last case, besides it's just a leg." He responded as he slotted the corrected limb back into place and pulled his boot back on.

"Still it must be hard, I mean always having to remember it." She responded with a note of empathy.

"My father used to say everyone has to face their past." He responded.

For a moment Addison picked up on his accent, more importantly he had one at all, clipped and short even with syllables meant to be stretched, reminding her ever so slightly of the English she had once shared a landmass with before finding work amongst the stars.

"Are you speaking English?" she asked a moment of quaint surprise as she realised what it must mean.

"After I graduated from university I became a private security contractor on one of your colonies, picked up the language." He responded.

"We're at the address." she said a moment later as she pulled them in to land.

In the shadows of turian frigates, human cruisers and freighters from across the known galaxy was a fairly classy restaurant/bar called the Dawn-Star Pinnacle, a quarian run establishment of all things and to the best of his knowledge a perfectly upstanding one.

They parked at a small landing bay at the stalk of the long wide walkway leading up to the bar where an old docking cradle used to sit, though after damage from the geth assault they had sold off a lot of the more damaged areas to help generate funds.

Standing out front was Sergeant Karick, a turian beat officer he'd worked with once or twice before though there were around forty thousand C-sec members across his ward alone leading to significant shuffling, to his flawless count he had been around five hundred and twelve as of today.

"Detectives." He said with a friendly intonation of his flanged voice as he caught sight of them.

"Anything we should know." Gadon asked as he looked around. The scene had been well looked after, the 'do not cross' lines had been set up around the small squat building. A small crowd of regulars and passers by were stood around chatting amongst themselves.

"Not much, the bartender found the body when he opened up, I interviewed him and sent him home." He responded proudly "been busy keeping these guys from contaminating anything since." Karick said as he gestured with his talonned hand to the crowd, made up mostly of turians and quarians though a few humans also dotted the crowd.

"Good man, keep the crowd at bay we'll take it from here." Gadon replied to the taller avian.

A single quarian, oddly tall and distinctly husky compared to his kin forced his way through the crowd with what looked to be a nervous body language showing through his thickened enviro-suit, devoid of the usual robes that usually hung over his species, replaced by a long blue coat that reached down to his birdlike calves.

"Officers I came as soon as I could, what do you need me for." he asked as he looked over their shoulders to see his bar, built from a refurbished docking control centre, seemed unscathed despite the ruckus.

"Well mister…" Gadon gestured for a name.

"Rell'Terrin nar Blotter" He replied politely. Addison wrote down the name whilst Gadon made no such effort confident in his memory.

"We need you to come with us and identify the victim, if you can." Gadon said as he walked through the holographic barriers gesturing for the accumulated party to follow.

As he walked he was busy thinking, quickly the owner had arrived in a luxury sky-car and seemed to have tailored clothing yet the bar couldn't be turning nearly enough profit for that ergo the quarian would have had to own multiple venues. If that was the case then at best Terrin would be able to identify the body but most likely would not have been on premises at the time ruling him out as a witness or a perpetrator.

The door opened with a pneumatic hiss. The scene was still but it told of energy, booths were shredded by gunfire, originating from the victim's position, there was a large amount of it suggesting automatic weapons fire and spread out over a large area, suggesting either an inexperienced shooter or multiple perpetrators.

A few tables were overturned supporting that hypothesis, a few shots had definitely penetrated, the lack of bodies or blood suggested high grade armour or effective clean up, though given that the body was still here that was unlikely.

The body itself was interesting, an asari, matron stage and resting on a table, obviously there had been some sort of struggle. She didn't have any badge, symbol or uniform on her modest and practical office clothing suggesting she was a civilian.

The cause of death was obvious and intriguing. There was a thick bruise on the neck suggesting she had been choked or grabbed at the neck and a Tarsechi-9 combat knife favoured by mercenaries of many species was hilt-deep and gory wound in between her breasts. Based on the blade length and the woman's dimensions he realised the knife had gone all the way in and stuck into the table slightly, piercing her heart, her wind pipe and several major arteries along with her spinal cord, died quickly but most likely quite painfully.

"Keelah." Terrin gasped as he saw the state of the bar, it had been his first venue since leaving the flotilla after years working as a mechanic and though he could rebuild he could never replace, somehow the bar would always be tarnished by such a memory of the poor woman's death.

"Do you recognise her?" Gadon asked simply to the shocked proprietor as he scanned the body for further information.

"Yeah, Nyatta T'Quin she was a regular before I diversified." he responded somewhat wistfully, the mother of two had been a low level journalist at the Galaxy News Network and his first customer, and something of a crush those long years ago that had been just the blink of an eye for her.

"Very well then, thank you for your cooperation we'll be wanting a number and an address before you go." Gadon stated in a professionally detached manner.

"Of course Detectives." He said as he handed them each a small call card with the relevant details.

"Sergeant, send the crowd home and call the morgue." Gadon asked over the auto translating comns chip embedded in his ear fringe.

"Gadon, I ran a search for her, according to her Extra-Book account she quit from the Galaxy News Network."

"Good, once we're done here we'll go talk to her old colleagues."

He went to the blue 'woman' and began searching her, he gently undid her bloodstained jacket and searched the pockets, coming up with nothing more than a used tissue he'd rather he hadn't found until he searched a little deeper into the small pocket.

A piece of paper with "See me in my office" written on it followed by the numbers eight seven nine four and two.

"Well it would seem we're getting orders from beyond the grave." Gadon commented dryly as he let her take a look at it.

"We should also be interviewing her employer whilst the corpse-jockeys look her over." Addison advised as she opened the hatch again.

"Indeed, let's be going then." he said as he pocketed the note.

They made the quick walk past the appreciatively larger crowd, gathered now by the distinctive orange ambulance parked outside.

Though with keen eyes he picked out a small group of asari and turians their dark and practical clothes were plain, almost strangely so and they stood in a slightly too regular formation with stiff and sturdy postures, definitively military or at least paramilitary. He turned a way as they craned their heads towards him.

"Addison." Gadon whispered as nonchalantly as he could muster.

"Yes." she returned in kind.

"We're being watched."


	2. Chapter 2: Heed the Call

Their nimble red craft pulled into the sky. Gadon's reflective black eyes were frequently diverted to the long black aero-shuttle a few cars back, as displayed in the rear view screen which had risen from the landing pad a few moments after them, noticeably the group he had spotted earlier were gone.

"Addison what do we have on this Nyatta." He asked without taking his eyes of the skyway or the pursuing craft.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, no mental illness or criminal record, nothing at all really." She responded as she scrolled down the display, projected via the car's built in personal computer.

"How strange, it seems someone just decided to put a hit on an ordinary woman." He responded, still distracted by the craft.

In short order they reached their destination, a high tower that jutted proudly from the citadel, it had stood through the rachni, the krogan, and most recently the geth without a scratch, leaving it one of the oldest and most prestigious journalistic institutions not only on the citadel but across all of citadel space. If Nyatta had left such a venerated job then there was most likely an exceptionally good reason for her to do so.

The craft touched down at a landing pad near the large tower though the black craft seemed to keep on going, quite possibly just to avoid suspicion.

They walked into the foyer swiftly. It was an amazing sight, white walls and floors mixed with marble pillars and potted plants in transparent troughs that revealed the tended soil and organic roots.

There were twin rectangular pools of spotless and clear water dotted with small lilies, and holograms displaying their most famous articles dotted the walls like trophies.

There was a placid looking human sat upon her office chair behind a high glass desk which revealed the internal circuitry of the integrated computer.

The visitors sat in the painfully modern settees and armchairs looked up as the saw the pair of c-sec officers. A willowy human woman with pointed features, marred slightly by the jagged scar over the bridge of her nose and long black hair streaked with a line of green dye and tied into a small top knot. Her partner was no less impressive as one of the rarer species of galactic society, covered from finned head to webbed feet in dull blue and grey, his membrane sheathed eyes were black and reflective slightly.

The single unarmed guard looked at them for a moment in the menacing manner all krogan do, even if he was unarmed the pair independently determined that invoking his wrath would involve more paperwork and broken limbs than they preferred.

The drell spoke first in a commanding voice, warbling deep and croaking. "Were looking for Nyatta T'Quin's office, urgently." He said as he produced his badge, going to the effort of letting his coat ruffle enough for her to see his side arm.

"Can I have a name officer." the secretary replied with corporately mandated politeness.

"We just gave you one." Addison retorted.

"No yours."

"Sandoval and Gadon, now tell us where the office is or we'll come back with a warrant." "I'm sure the Daily Caster would love that." Addison added menacingly. Gadon was silently awed and paid attention not to reflect the shock on his face.

The secretary's smile remained as the rest of her face dropped in fright as though she were unsure of what to do and followed her etiquette training as a frightened sailor might cling to flotsam in a storm, not that any of them had ever set foot on a wet-ship.

"Very well, I'm searching her now." There was a slight pause as the searches came in. "Ah yes, it's due to be cleaned at four. It's on the eighty sixth floor, twelfth office her name should still be on the door."

"Thank you." Addison replied in what the secretary was sure was a mockery of her mandated tone.

As they walked into the transparent elevators Addison began speaking. "I haven't seen anyone following us."

"I concur, it's possible they don't want to risk being caught by a newspaper." Gadon replied.

The elevators shot upwards at speeds normally sufficient to induce nausea in frailer species if not for the mass effect generators built into it.

The elevator stopped at the appointed floor. Like most offices the majority of it was taken up by small desks of office workers handling their own small part of the tedious minutia that was required to run a galaxy wide media empire, a few looked but paid them no mind.

At the perimeter of the wide flat room were moderately sized offices, the largest of which being the editor's. They found the correct office, numbered and named accordingly.

The door was locked and presented a code entry five spaces long.

He quickly pressed in the numbers of the card causing the door to immediately recede.

The office was almost depressingly lived in, as though it were just waiting for it's usual inhabitant to come back to work. Photos of family were on the imported wood desk, there were motivational posters of office humour on the walls and a tasteful rug on the floor. On shelves there sat hard matter books ranging from great works of fiction to tomes of media law, interposed with magazines from shows that had been cancelled centuries ago.

"Addison polarise the windows for me I don't want anyone seeing this." Gadon ordered.

A moment later the room darkened, Gadon retracted the thick membranes over his eyes to better see in the low light, much as his ancestors had on the desert nights of Rakhana.

"Would you mind checking the shelves I'll see what I can pull from the computer." He asked more politely after he heard a disgruntled…grunt.

He pulled open the drawers of the desk and was rewarded with nothing but an empty hip flask that smelt of hard liquor. Not something he observed in practice but none the less found interesting, drunken humans were always a sight. Their strange follicles flipping in the air as they danced, casting long chaotically shifting shadows in the shifting light of night clubs. A pleasant memory of his ex though tinged by a bitter separation.

He sat at the desk and went to pull himself closer to the console when he felt something jutting from the underside of the desk. Pawing around blindly he felt it's dimensions, discovering swiftly that it was an OSD taped by adhesive strips to the desk, which swiftly pulled it loose of.

"Come here I think I've got something." Gadon stated with far more enthusiasm than Addison had heard him display in the short time she had known him.

A small holographic screen popped up presenting various encrypted files, including one in video with 'If I Die' next to it, the only one not encrypted.

"This is Nyatta, if you're reading this then I'm dead or dying, hi by the way." The dead woman said with a nervous smile. "There's a large amount of information on this device, make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands." there was a tone of finality in her voice that illicit a deep sympathy in the back of the drell's mind. "and get it to my contact he'll have the codes to decrypt it." she added absently though still with the same tense pace in her voice.

"I tried to take this to my editor but I think he's in on it. I'm going to meet with my contact tonight, if I'm dead before that then get this to him or c-sec." She added after a brief pause.

"And whoever this is could you tell my daughters I love them and I'm so, so sorry I had to do this." She added with a single tear rolling down her blue face.

"That brave woman." Addison reflected as she too looked around for any details the senior Detective might have missed.

"That's why we're meant to be brave so civilians don't have to." Gadon reflected as he scratched at the grey ribbing on his frill and throat.

Across the wards and out into the space between the arms to the Tayseri ward the activation of the monitored computer instantly sent a small light flashing on a large screen displaying numerous bars of text and a number of complex computing programs that lit the poorly illuminated room.

"It would seem those loose ends are rather snagging on us." the salarian perched over the screen quipped as he scratched at his horned head in the same rapid and clipped manner of many of his species.

"You aren't paid to be smug, Joralan, you're paid to handle the technology." An asari retorted as she stood quickly from an expensive arm chair.

"I suspect this is the same party T'Laas' group encountered, were they able to get any I.D." A flanged and turian voice asked as he entered the room, a bright light from the room beyond cast him a long shadow augmented by his impressive build.

"They had to track them by car, they managed to scan his IFF, it's a requisition from C-Sec under a Detective P. Gadon."

"C-Sec." The asari repeated with a dismissive scoff. "They're just civilians, badges or not." She added.

"I came from C-Sec." Joralan responded defensively as he spun from his console.

"You were infiltration and intelligence, you weren't afraid to get your hands dirty." She responded. "These are just detectives, they don't have the stomach for real combat." She responded.

"None the less Tethena." The turian responded slowly and diplomatically. "I took the liberty of reading his files, he has forty-seven successful cases and two medals from the battle of the citadel, for valour and proficiency in combat." He stated as he read it wholesale off of the data-pad in his two-fingered hand.

"Okay so maybe he can fight but he's nothing compared to us." She responded with a hint of pride in her voice.

"Most people aren't." Joralan responded glibly.

"We should mobilise T'Laas and her mercenaries." The turian advised.

"No, Korian even if she can get the mercs past security it'll probably tip off the detective, we can't have this one getting back to the council." She responded as she gently slid the data pad from his hand.

"Fair point I can check in with some contacts and arrange

Something for him." Korian responded.

"Agreed." the salarian and asari said one after the other.

"By the way have we gotten our payment yet I don't like mercenary work and I like charity even less." Tethena said.

"Yes, two point five million now, the other half when we're done." Joralan returned.

The word 'editor' was written into the door in solid matter to indicate it's permanence in contrast to the holographic placards that were on the front of it.

They knocked on it and moments later were rewarded with the door opening. As they entered they found a salarian glaring at him with small black eyes.

Gadon frowned back, she assumed it was hard to tell due to his thin lips which were often lost in the downward lines of his scaled jaw.

"Hello Mister…" Addison gestured for a name.

"Rannadril Ghan Swa Fulsoom Karaten Narr Bel Neroth" He said in rapid-fire staccato. "Did you get all that." Neroth replied condescendingly.

"Every word." Gadon returned. "We're investigating the disappearance one of your employees, Mrs Nyatta T'Quin." he continued.

There was a short sigh that suggested he was less than pleased.

"Should've seen this coming." He said glumly. "She had been acting irrationally last night when she quit but I had no idea she intended to kill herself." He responded with sorrow in his voice.

Addison however was not won over. "Who said she killed herself." She pointed out with the slight squeaking of her black leather jacket as she bought her elbows to rest on the editors desk, something she knew salarians considered rather rude.

"I simply assumed that's what she'd do." He responded visibly flustered.

"Considering that she had no history of mental or neurological imbalance I'd say that's highly unlikely." Addison pressed. For the second time now Gadon had to force himself from creasing his hard face with an impressed smile, she had certainly caught it quicker than he had.

"Yes but she was acting so strangely, it…it just seemed as though she might." He responded with even more distress.

Addison was clearly leading this one, as she narrowed her bright blue eyes, small and beady by drell standards as all humans were though in their own way right. "Well then would it interest you to know she was murdered." She responded.

"Murdered." he replied in a shocked whisper. "I had no idea."

"Oh, that's strange we have footage of her explicitly mentioning you in her murder." She responded.

"No, no!" He responded in naked terror this time, he put his arms out and waved his hands in fear. It was at precisely this moment she noticed something. On one of his small hands there was a long scar, faded green from the salarian's copper based blood was present beneath that. Bellow that there was a single black dot the size a five pence piece, she'd seen back on earth. A monitoring device and she knew it.

"Is that what I think that is." She said as she stood up, leaning forwards with her omni-tool flashing into life keen to scan it.

"Please no they'll, they'll kill me. Please!" He begged incoherently as he stood and backed away from the officers. He stopped suddenly and with a shocked look on his face as he pressed up against the glass walls of his office.

"We're C-Sec whoever it is we'll keep you safe." Gadon stated in a comforting voice rarely seen outside of his home.

"No, they're bigger than C-Sec, you can't keep them out, please just go" He said in a somewhat more coherent though still panicked voice only exacerbated by the rapid metabolism and fast paced voice of his amphibian kin. "…for both of us." he added in a strange oasis of lucidity.

"Please Neroth, tell us who they are and we'll send you somewhere safe, Sur'Kesh, Thessia, Palaven…Earth if we have to." Gadon said as he edged closer, slowly so as to avoid setting off the neurotic creature.

"No, they don't fear the law, fleets, guns, men…they'll make it as though we never existed." He responded in panic.

"We're the best police force in the known universe unless the entire terminus system comes after you we'll keep you safe." Addison responded as she too edged closer to the frightened editor from the other side.

"You don't understand, they won't fight them, you'll let them next to me, next to you, and then they'll kill us and people will call them heroes." Neroth panicked.

"Who are they!" Gadon said with a somewhat more annoyed tone in his voice.

"No I can't tell you. I've already said too much." He said in a more hoarse voice as he opened the cupboard behind him. He felt around for the intended object before wrapping his small hand around the butt of it.

"Tell my brother this was a bad idea." He said as he bought the cheap old pistol to his temple. It was a dated design from before heat sinks and most likely would never be able to breach their barrier vests. Not that he had purchased it or drawn it with any intention of fighting.

"No!" Gadon shouted his face lit up as he bought his omni-toll sheathed hand up, prepared to activate overload and fry the old weapon.

Unfortunately in the time it had taken for him to raise his hand Neroth had pulled the trigger. A cloud of green came from the other side of his, significantly lighter head along with splatters of grey matter and skull. The tremendous recoil forced the gun out of his limp and lifeless hand as he slumped to the ground sideways, his eyes still half open and reflecting the world he had swiftly left.

"I knew he'd crack." Joralan said as he held out his hand awaiting the promised twelve thousand-value credit chit from Tethena as pulled away from his screen having just fried the circuitry of Neroth's computer.

"True but at least he did his own clean up." She responded with a toothy smile on her plum, violet lips.

"I don't know, I've got green on my nano-cams." He responded with a small chuckle.

Korian had been silent through both the interview and the suicide, possibly nonplussed or perhaps silent in disgust, the hard plates of his black-painted face made him hard to read aside from the twitches of his mandibles and their toothy flashes.

"Were you able to get a facial recognition on the _human_?" he asked, stressing the last word with the tone of an insult.

"Yes, Addison Sandoval, fresh transfer from the Bachjret ward." He said as bought up a picture, it had been his impression that all humans looked alike until he caught sight of her.

Her chin was pierced with a simple stud, her ears were replete with a number of piercing and spike hung from their fleshy lobes. Her dark hair was streaked with a line of neon green that swirled in a bun whilst her lipstick was a glossy black to match her eyeliner.

Frankly it was a wonder of political correctness that she was allowed such things, when it had first been formed the turian officers, detectives and all were expected to go bare faced as a show of unity and as a matter of practicality, however many turian citizens seemed notably distrustful.

By reinstating it they were able to work more effectively with their avian kin. The asari however felt it was unfair that they couldn't have their facial markings on display and the salarians felt the same for their own.

In the end they simply allowed any cultural apparel that wasn't flammable or magnetic to be worn.

"Less experienced than Gadon, only been on the force six years, one medal for conspicuous bravery from her precinct on earth, oh and she's a biotic, L3-R."

"Guess the poor little primate couldn't take it." Tethena teased.

"We should silence them before this gets any further I suspect they'll be able to put the pieces together eventually." Korian advised without a trace of mirth at their little rapport.

"Even if they find that out there's no way they'll be able track it back to any of us, they don't have the clearance." She responded dismissively, her smile dropping slightly.

"I'm beginning to think you don't want to kill them, a flash of conscience perhaps." He returned, in a condescending intonation.

"We will put them down, properly."


	3. Chapter 3: Shadow of Malevolence

The trip to the Zakera ward's morgue had been a quiet one, with the shuttle set to follow the ambulance ahead of them they had all the time in the world to reflect on what had just happened,

There had been little conversation during the trip, mere pleasantries and futile efforts to abate the deafening silence.

Without a word they descended onto the landing platform nearest the morgue, in contrast the numerous towers the height of moderate mountains it was comparably a sedate hill that spread deep into the city's foundation like the roots of a gnarled oak.

Moving quickly and without a word they disappeared into the elevator as it descended down to the autopsy level.

"You seem shaken, I take it you haven't seen that before?" Gadon said as he stared blankly forwards at his reflection in the polished chrome of the elevator doors. His blue face was slightly paler and the grey ribbing of his frilled neck was equally faded, making him look older than his venerable forty two years as he waited for his emotion to subside.

"No you?" she responded quickly and quietly as she too looked at her reflection. At the green stripe, she wondered as she remembered the salarian's green stained internals if it looked like blood, for that matter did the deep blue of c-sec apparel remind the turians of their equivalent

_A silly thought_, she rationalised though it did serve to distract her frantic mind of the central topic of the alien's death.

"Once we were breaking up a sentient trafficking ring in Shin Akiba, we found a batarian ring leader in his office, probably believed the propaganda and thought we were going to torture him." Gadon responded clinically, he was less bothered by that one's death, he had been a sadist in life and a fool in his passing believing, arrogantly that he had cheated them.

But Neroth, he was frightened, coerced and probably blackmailed into whatever hand he had played in Nyatta's death.

Still to face it for a moment had given him some closure as he could see by the return of colour to scales. His partner as he observed was still somewhat pallid, human skin always did seem odd to him so pliant and sensitive that it hardly made sense to be the outer layer of protection against the elements. Stranger still he pondered he had visited Rakhana with his mother and seen photos of Africa, it seemed strange that such similar lands would cause such variegated beings.

The elevator opened on the autopsy floor, kept to chill that prickled against Gadon's bare forearms, giving him pause to unbutton and unfurl his sleeves for the duration of this hopefully quick visit.

They followed the signs written on the narrow, sterile corridors lit by cold, anti bacterial lights designed to kill any bacteria with a supposedly harmless radiation.

Sat on the metallic slab was Nyatta, still pale just as the last time they had seen her in the flesh though draped in a long blanket to grant her naked, disassembled and then reassembled form some dignity.

Standing on the other side of her as he put a freshly sterilised scalpel away was one of the numerous morticians that doddered around the miniature necropolis. He was a human, as his closely shaven hair attested clad in traditional scientists apparel and beneath a flimsy, disposable apron marked with faint handprints of blue blood from his grim work.

He turned to face them with a pleasant smile on his pale face, paler still from the fluorescent lights which leached colour from the world. He was short, shorter than Gadon and a head blow Addison. Despite that his gaunt form, practically bereft of muscle or fat and equipped with long spindly limbs none the less gave a strange impression of height as he twirled around on his thin neck.

"Good afternoon Detectives." He said in what Addison recognised as an Italian accent of all things. "I understand you have another body for us to look over, rather a productive lot eh." he added with a slightly amused huff.

"Good to see you as well Doctor Cybil, do you have anything for us." Gadon replied with a friendly smirk that creased his stiff face.

"Not too much you don't already know except for this." He said as he pulled out a small electronic device on a metallic tray, still smeared slightly in violet blood.

"A sub dermal communicator." Gadon observed.

"Exactly, it would seem our little journalist had a lot of connections." Cybil said as he leaned over it and tapped away at the computer connected to the little box that had once been in the woman's wrist. "Who would've guessed." he added sarcastically over his shoulder.

The screen presented an enlarged image of the holographic display that would normally pop up from it's owner's wrist.

"I had the Techs search the memory banks and came up with this." Cybil said as he tapped a gloved fingertip at a few holographic buttons.

A screen showing the numbers 14537974 in blue to suggest it was the own number and another one, 12235860 in red to suggest it was the other end of the conversation.

A voice Gadon and Addison recognised as Nyatta's spoke in time to the illuminations of the blue number.

"Hello, Horrigan told me you could help me out with some information."

"I can." A deep and warbling voice, krogan, batarians or perhaps even an exceptionally baritone drell responded. "For a price." He added.

"Fine we can meet at the Dawn-Star Pinnacle, I know the owners they'll give us some privacy." She responded.

"I charge extra for meeting at your convenience, consider it…hazard pay."

"Very well, I'll have your credits when we meet, Eight thirty, tomorrow."

"Agreed."

A small chime signalled the end of the call.

"Thank you Doctor Cybil." Gadon said as he and Addison tapped at their omni tools and began a download of the implant's memory banks.

"Good bye doctor, we have a contact to call." Addison said politely as they turned away, with the flutter of Gadon's coat tails.

"See you again soon." he responded absent-mindedly…she hoped.

They retreated up the elevator again and Gadon noted that their reflections at least seemed somewhat more colourfull, strange how visiting a strange doctor and a dead woman can perk someone up, Addison's cheek had returned to their slightly rosy complexion whilst his frill had become slightly less faded.

They came to the landing platform, the normally gentle air of the Citadel was disrupted by the backwash of numerous vehicles, ambulances, civilians and even a few of the blue and black livery of C-Sec cars emblazoned with their signature.

"Would you mind driving Addison?" Gadon asked "Addie, sorry, I'd like to make a call." He added hastily as he moved to the designated co-pilot's seat.

The craft once again pulled into the air, a quick look towards the rear view screen showed nothing of the black craft as they spun up the shuttle's engines which thrummed with a deep whir.

There was a slight delay as he dialled in the numbers before being connected.

"How did you get this number?" The voice snapped.

"Nyatta gave it to me."

"Doubtful, she's dead." The voice said, through it's deep ponderous tones a note of suspicion was apparent.

"Yes and she said you would be able to tell us who did it." Gadon replied calmly.

"Who are you?" The voice asked in the same angry tone it had demonstrated all conversation.

"A private investigator, Nyatta's children hired me." A lie but not so far from the truth that he couldn't realistically be the lie.

"Fine." It admitted. "But I pick where we meet and we do it in three hours."

"Very well then."

"Fine, We meet on the Kithoi ward, Asyeri blocks the Red-Bar lounge, two hours." The voice hissed before terminating the call.

"Great how are we going to set up a stake out location in two hours?" Addison questioned despondently.

"My apartment's within a few blocks, if we use the monitoring gear in the shuttle you can probably cover me." Gadon said as he entered in his home address into the auto pilot.

"And that doesn't bother you, that of all the arms and all the blocks he picked yours." Addison responded with a bit of paranoia that sent a pleased smile on Gadon's face.

"Not particularly, we bought it for the view and it's the busiest shopping district on the citadel." Gadon returned sombrely.

"Oh, I didn't know you had a wife." She responded with a peek of curiosity. "It must be hard…finding other drell I mean." she added.

"She wasn't my wife and she wasn't a drell." He responded passively, in a manner that suggested he was correcting her more for clarity's sake than any sense of emotion.

They reached the parking bay at the base of the building and passed through the foyer, a pleasant thing though of no comparison to the GNN foyer they had been in mere hours ago.

They crossed it's synth-plastic floor, scuffed and even scratched by countless boots, feet and talons from dozens of species, the furniture was sturdy and utilitarian designed more to seat visitors than to impress them.

Apartment life on the wards was vastly different to that of Edinburgh Addison noted, whilst many of those buildings were independently owned and paid for month by month the citadel's quarters were owned by massive conglomerations and crewed by a large support staff including built in restaurants and other such amenities. It reminded her of living inside a giant hotel or some form of exclusive private boarding school.

They strode to the elevator and ascended, first beyond the transparent environment bubble and then the lower buildings of the Kithoi mall, the Jattri museum of modern art and a few other land marks of the Citadel. Luckily most of it had been spared in the geth attack though from the windows of their elevator pressure suited workers on scaffolds surrounding the Kithoi Tower of Commerce looming with it's scarred visage a scant few blocks away to serve as a reminder of how illusionary that luck was. It's skeletal shadow illuminated by the bleak Widow star cast a fraction of itself over their faces for a moment as they went further up.

The doors retracted to display the hallway, like much of the station it was made of metals and plastics though murals, friezes and the twisting, nebulous fluidity of holographic art gave it more than the ascetic void much of the station presented.

He walked slowly down the wide hall, past a few numbered doors before they reached the somewhat larger corner apartment.

The door slid open near-silently to reveal the arid air of the apartment. Like most apartments on the citadel it was primarily open plan though it lacked the usual Spartan atmosphere they often retained. Decorative art and tapestries hung from the wall whilst small knickknacks and mementos dispersed with photos of all things.

Other than that it was fairly normal aside from the small stairs which had been replaced with ramps, she had assumed from before he got his new leg.

Addison remembered from her interspecies anatomy courses that the drell had entirely eidetic memories and certainly didn't seem like the type to purchase such things out of sentiment.

Then she peered into one of the photos, Gadon was there or at least the drell in the picture resembled him, but the soft smile and loving eyes seemed so incongruous with her impression of him. Sat beneath him in what seemed to be wheelchair was a human woman, eyes of green and hair of gold smiling back at him.

Gadon caught sight of her staring at the photos and for a moment cursed himself for neglecting to store them somewhere, having simply left them there out of laziness and lack of motivation, unlike most species out of sight did not at all mean out of mind to the drell after all.

None the less he did appreciate the other decorations, it served to give some sort of impression as to what he had done over his life and give the impression of emotion in contrast to his people's reputation of a reserved people.

"So what do you want to do?" he asked as he hung his coat away in a small wall cupboard, filled with colour swaps of his present apparel.

"Nothing much I suppose." She said as she felt the twinge of electricity as she put a hand to the top of his kitchen, a small side effect and compared to the…episodes she had experienced with the old X2 implants a rather decent trade off. Though she would often feel a sense of loss when she attempted to lift a box in her apartment via biotics and found it heavier and harder to lift.

She felt the soft glow of a holo-screen against her cheek and heard the dulled chattering of what appeared to be the Galactic News Network.

"We're on the news." Gadon commented as he sat upon his sofa, his feet were resting against the coffee table casually as he watched keenly.

Sitting down upon the other edge of the sofa she heard the soft tones of an asari newsreader.

"Editor Neroth is said to have committed suicide in his office after a confrontation with C-Sec over the death of employee Nyatta T'Quin, the officers are so far unavailable for interview." The newsreader said with a smile on her face t hat reminded him of countless over public figures, smiling like Francis Kitt's salarian Pagliacci as he remembered seeing in happier days.

The brief news cast was replaced by a starscape as they flicked over to the silent intro for Parker Preach: Omega P.I, a terribly melodramatic account of an ex alliance intelligence operative turned private investigator, normally he looked upon such things as a foolish amusement but it was one of the few human shows he knew, somehow he doubted Addison would appreciate Rakhanan throat singing, namely due to the fact that she would never hear it.

In the silence a rumble came from one of their stomachs, the nervous look on Addison's face was the primary clue and hardly one requiring their considerable deductive acumen.

"Sorry, I suppose I rather forgot lunch, and breakfast I was in such a rush to get here." Addison said apologetically.

"There's still some human food in the freezer unless you'd like to try kajhe-fried anemone and a side of leek-worms." he responded and caught that slightly disgusted look humans often gave at the sound of drell delicacies.

He did wonder why humans, even the non-biotics needed feeding so much more than drell who generally had a meal every other day, he had further researched the birth place of the primates and found it to be just as, if not more inhospitable than the exact starting region of Rakhana but then they spread out to rich jungles and swamps and ice fields and felt the strange symptom of a tilted axis known as seasons.

The ancient drell explorers on the other hand expanded into desert, and then more desert and then a bit more desert, then a sea which they couldn't drink from and then finally more desert. He imagined suicides must have been high on such a dull rock.

But then he never really belonged to any drell, culturally speaking, he had never trampled the sands of Rakhana nor choked down the wet air of Kahje. Life on the citadel and the human Colony of New Albion was all he had known.

He remembered once the name a bitter drell perpetrator had given him once, split-finger in reference to his surgically separated middle and index fingers to allow him better use of hard suits and pistols.

In truth he had held no love of the hanar, or enkindlers, or arashu, nor had he cared for the concept of detachment believing it to be convenient existentialist nonsense in the face of science.

He was snapped from his thoughts by the clunk of a freezer and the hum of a microwave as a Zero-Pro! hyper-nourishment nutrition-log was placed within it.

He felt her weight upon the chair as she sat down and began to consume the tasteless meal made no better by the radiant application of heat.

"There's a stake in there, humans like stake." Gadon responded an hour later as he noticed she was barely half way done.

"I'm a vegetarian." She responded simply.

He rolled his eyes, fortunately hidden beneath the membranous sheathes over his eyes.

It was those same sheathes that did nothing to stop the flash bang thrown into the room.


	4. Chapter 4: Where Demons Tread

They both tumbled behind the sofa and turned from the bomb with their eyes pressed tight which marginally succeeded in blocking out the overwhelming force of light and sound that bit at their senses.

Squinting in the suddenly blinding light of his apartment Gadon popped up from behind the furniture turned fortification and released a perfectly controlled trio of shots.

The point man who came running brazenly through the front door was expecting an easy fight and was never corrected as a single, phase-jacketed bullet breached shields and his brain matter was splattered across the walls of the complex's hall in a cacophony of red that reminded him of an old Pollock painting he had seen once before.

From outside the T'Laas saw her hireling's nearly headless body slump over. "Mercenaries." she sighed before signalling for the other four to charge in.

Dual bursts of rifle fire forced them behind the narrow cover of his slowly vanishing sofa. It really served only to prevent targeting a bullet could shoot straight across the thickest part of it and do as much damage to their light shields as if it had shot through air.

Their fire had been well controlled to avoid hitting the resilient windows behind them, whilst the mass effect barrier would most likely activate in sufficient time to prevent them from being flung into space it would still alert the emergency services and alert the floor staff.

One gunman was covering the other as their comrades had advanced across the small room.

Gadon had been in this situation before. It was the battle of the Citadel and geth, assisted by krogan of all things were pouring in from drop ships. The crafts' insectile forms blackened the milky sky as they disgorged their troops. Hanging above them and lit in a destructive red was the massive cephalopod form of the Sovreign construct and it's tendrilling beams of energy that tore through the defending fleets.

C-Sec outposts were overwhelmed, apartments raised and conquered and the surging menace of the apocalyptic army was pressing in to overwhelm them.

Though at the financial district of the Kithoi ward that was in fact not the case. Some eighty civilians were huddled inside the twisting labyrinth of a large grocery store, long abandoned by it's owners who had fled for shelter in the emergency bunkers at the first sign of trouble.

The geth were filling the streets, stranding any who could not reach the bunkers and almost certainly dooming them. Gadon, Agoriun and five C-Sec cadets and eight security guards were all that had been able to group up to protect the defenceless citizens, to the death if duty called for it.

The Battle of The Citadel lasted a mere hour. The battle to reclaim the citadel, however lasted a standard month. In that time they were accosted by geth attack squads almost constantly. The loss of Senior-Cadet Phelps on the second week was a hard hit to morale but they pulled through.

By the time alliance forces had gotten word of their little and begun to set up a rescue party for their enclave Gadon and his men had already punched a way through to the alliance's safe zone with strangely few bodies in tow. One cadet, and three security guards had died in defence of the store but their sacrifice prevented a single civilian casualty.

He was snapped from that thought by the sound of more present gunfire.

Addison hunkered down in focus for a moment and focussed twitching every muscle along her toned arms and firing complex synapses to instruct her implants as an aura of blue bathed her small form. A second later her augmented mind reached across the darks energy that permeated the universe and that room. The fridge of the apartment was ripped clear of it's moorings and flung at them, though it's speed was not enough to raise their barriers it was sufficient to smack into them with sufficient power to crack skulls, ribs and spines and tear muscle and rupture organs, killing them both quickly and she preferred to think painlessly.

The stunned look on the mercenaries who had snuck near them was all the opening they needed.

In a roar of vengeance the guard to Gadon's side lunged at him with the cutting edge of a cutting edge omni-blade, it's monomolecular blade stuck into the air where Gadon had been a moment previously.

A comparatively simple fist to her plated jaw broke the majority of her needle like teeth and sent her reeling back. Before she could respond with the lobster like energy claw of the omni-blade Gadon had gripped the arm mid activation.

Before the turian mercenary's considerable musculature could react Gadon had pushed her arm up with one hand and wrenched her forearm downwards at the wrist with the other. The sickening crunch of a broken arm as he fragmented her elbow was heard by all the room's occupants.

A nanosecond later he grasped the back of her tattooed head, considerably above his own and then bought it down on the hard point of his synthetic knee.

She fumbled in a daze for the tempest at her hips. Before she could reach it a carnifex was lodged against her forehead behind the reaches of her useless shields. A single round took her head off in a cloud of azure blue.

With considerably greater ease Addison flung her combatant first into the ceiling with a grizzly crunch before slamming them into the floor with sufficient force to tear a few ligaments and judder their brains in their heads, once again killing them.

They turned to each other peering at their handiwork beyond each other and were about to congratulate each other when a shockwave of blue-shifted energy tossed them against the wall of the apartment hard enough to send a spider web of slightly blooded cracks across the outer layer of the windows.

In the doorway was an asari clad in high grade armour, extensively customised with up armoured panels, ammo pouches and enough attached weaponry to supply lesser rebellions.

Gadon squirmed and struggled to shift the heavy, battered sofa. A moment later an aura of biotic energy, courteously provided by Addison pushed the furniture away in a tumbling heap.

T'Laas deflected it over her head, splitting the hulking upholstery down the middle.

Gadon attempted to raise his pistol before being slammed against the wall.

"Detective Peeli Gadon, I'm rather disappointed." she announced in an arrogant voice bereft of concern for the death of her men.

"Your men are dead I should hope you're disappointed." he responded as he felt his medi-gel implant numb the pain and mute the damage of his cracked rib.

"To be honest I was going to have to silence them anyway." She responded callously, treading over the blood sodden corpse of one of her deceased hirelings.

"Murderous bitch." he responded with an air of defiance as he pulled himself on his feet. A strong throw flung him back first to the wall and then to peel off and fall straight back to the floor.

He was winded and spluttering, he saw the blue skinned woman standing there, the trench coat to cover her armour was blasted away in tatters by the flare of her biotic energy. Frames cracked and glasses ruptured, as the arcane energies billowed in unseen dimensions as she balled a single bony hand into a fist.

Her face was lit with rage and her violet eyes were wild in their sockets as she focussed so intently on him. He wearily attempted to raise himself, a small fling her from her off hand knocked his bruised legs from under him. He attempted to get to his knees and then to stand but was once again pushed.

Looking up on all fours like a prostrating scholar beneath a biotic god. Blood streamed from a ruptured lip and padded on the floor. Despite his reduced stature his stance remained defiant, unbroken and undefeated in contrast to his injuries.

He set his face as stern as he could muster and pressed a hard scowl, his glossy black eyes fixed balefully and unyieldingly as he saw her wind back to release the almighty shockwave.

His rendezvous with oblivion was postponed by a counter push from Addison who had found her way to her feet during T'Laas and Gadon's 'conversation.'

A pulsing sphere of brilliant blue energy hung between them whilst stray tatters of the shredded trench coat and the tufts of tattered upholstery orbiting around them. The sphere twitched intermittently, causing the debris to wobble and twist like flotsam in a storm. Both combatants were strained from their frequent bursts of telekinetic energy. The sounds of their pained grunts and laboured breaths.

The sphere edged gradually closer to Addison, as a human and an L3 she was feeling a greater strain and emitting a lesser output compared to the near-millennial asari and her species' innate aptitude for biotics.

That being said beads of sweat were running down her cerulean face and dripping from her bent nose. The look on her face was one of determination mixed with anger at the annoying defiance of the officers. They were police, soft and little more than civilians much less the human and her flittering little life, or worse the drell who were fortunate to live to a hundred-and-twenty if they weren't stuck with the jellyfish.

In her distracted determination Gadon had found his opportunity and capitalised it. Crawling slowly along the ground with stifled hisses of pain he crawled his way around her bit-by-bit.

T'Laas could feel it now, her energy coming closer to the human detective and her gradually weakening attempts to rebuff her. The satisfaction of a challenging victory was beginning to bring a wide predatory smile.

It was muted somewhat when T'Laas saw something, amidst the glare and the hum of their mental struggle and distraction of whipping debris. It was Addison and she was smiling.

A round pierced her lower body in between the third and second ribs puncturing her upper lung. She staggered and the effort faltered, dissipating the sphere into nothing with a momentary exertion. A second round pierced again through the lower chest and a third to her waist finally caused her to drop to the floor.

"You can't….can't think you'll win this….we **will **come for you." T'Laas said between horrid gurgling gasps as she fell to floor, deep gashes in her torso seeped blue pools that overflowed onto the floor.

"We who?" Gadon said as he looked over the dying woman. He had seen people like this before, teetering upon the brink of oblivion, sometimes it was because he had shot them some times it was because he hadn't shot whoever it was that would injure them so. Either way twists of failure swirled within his mind as he saw the colour draining from her face.

"You're the detective figure it out yourself." She responded bitterly, coughing up a bit of blood and dislodged lung matter.

Gadon went to initialise the medi-gel programming stored to his omni-tool's play list. C-Sec protocol, nay his personal protocol dictated that it was a matter of duty for him to save T'Laas' dimming life.

"Save it." She responded, her voice a weaker whisper. Despite that when she forced his hand away he felt a grave weight upon it.

There was a soft almost knowing snigger that escaped her blood drenched lips as her blurry eyes half shat, the bottom half clearly gazing into oblivion now.

For minutes there was a painful silence after the brief, frenetic reverb of the gun fighting their ears, or ear equivalents nearly stung for more and the abruptness of it's passing snapped them from their adrenaline fuelled energy.

For a moment his home felt wrong, hostile even as he studied the damage that had befallen it. The kitchen was a wreck, the dented and damaged fridge had shattered counters during it's bioticaly assisted surge, ripped fittings marked it's escape. Numerous photos and paintings and portraits had been left hanging cracked and wonky on the walls.

The window was cracked and the bifurcated sofa was reduced to tufts of stuffing and a denatured frame. The holo-screen was flickering and blinking from the turian brain matter on it's projector.

His home his battlefield.

With the assistance of his medi-gel stores. A moment later the major damage to his ribs began to knit itself together again and the bruises on his legs felt lessened to nothingness. The minor sprains dotted around Addison's body were addressed similarly.

"Peeli?" She said almost derisively. "I can see why you were so hard about it now."

"It's just Gadon…Addie." he responded with a slight smirk that masked his annoyance. Why his mother had thought it appropriate to give him such a name he never would know, ancient warriors be damned he had always found it a tad…feminine compared to the names of other drell.

He activated his omni-tool and thanks to improved hacking module technology managed to pull most of the rapidly self deleting data from the dead woman's suit until a gasp from Addison tore him from his work.

A downwards pointing, feathered arrowhead was stencilled onto her armour's shoulder plate as a mark of pride. Evidently she had been too arrogant to anticipate her death in battle.

"Spectres." He gasped in his strange, wrasping voice.

"The Council will want to hear about this." Addison responded as she peered at it intently, a note of disbelief in her voice.

He pressed on into the reading of the suit's extracts, triggering a recording of her voice logs.

"Did the pay com through, I don't really want these mercenaries coming out of my pay." T'Laas' voice said.

"Yes, they've agreed to pay this expense." A turian voice responded.

"Gadon fell for it, our inside man spotted him on the way to his apartment." A salarian voice stated quickly and sharply.

"I shall move in to eliminate him, T'Laas out."

A look of shame was written on his face, he should have listened to Addison, it was far too strange a coincidence that the nearest bar to his apointment out of the thousands of venues on the citadel.

"You were right I suppose, should've suspected." Gadon remarked to Addison as he shut off the recording. Agoriun would have caught that, his Palaven-Intelligence instilled caution would have ensured it.

Addison normally enjoyed being able to laude a told-you-so situation such as these yet in the face of all this suffering, all this death and pain and misery it seemed staggeringly inappropriate.

"Dosen't matter now, we should take this information to The Council." she responded as she detached the plate from the rest of the modular armour.

"Agreed, I'll call a cleanup team." He responded as he brusquely returned to his more casual demenour.

"T'Laas' vitals are blank, I think she's dead." Joralan reported with shock on his flat, almost featureless face, marked only by a large, ornate tattoo on his forehead.

"It would seem that our C-Sec problem is growing larger, for "little more than civillians" they certainly seem to be doing quite well." Korian stated to Tethena as he walked into the controll centre.

"I can handle being wrong so long as our shares of the payment go up." The asari in question responded with a small smile, unaffected by the death of her comrade.

"There won't be any payment if you don't contain the situation." An electronically distorted voice accused via the monitor's speakers, so altered that not even it's gender much less it's species could be desciphered.

"We're spectres even if they don't believe us it's not we can be arrested" Tethena scoffed.

"That won't stop them revoking your status and I don't need this getting to the press." the voice responded.

"Very well, I'll try to get them arrested on suspiscion of terrorism or something." Korian conceded in a huff.

"See that you do, without your spectre-ship you are a loose end, nothing more."


	5. Chapter 5: Grim Fortunes

The Journey to the Presidium was swift, he recalled the last time he had flown this way and ended up plummeting into the Kithoi wards. A lack of geth colossi however ensured that for today at least that was not a massive concern. That being said he had been keen to do a full ordinance scan on their shuttle to be sure it hadn't been fitted with a bomb of some type.

They were guided to their designated landing hangar by a pair of mantis-gunships painted in blue and black C-Sec livery. They waited for the hangar bay doors to close and for the atmosphere to return. The dull red warning lights that illuminated the canopy became a soothing green before disappearing to make it clear that the air was now safe.

They stepped out onto the Spartan floor of the tower's landing bay to be met by the entourage that had agreed to take this before the Council, Acting-Executor Jallil, a human and for the moment the highest authority in C-Sec. Ambassador Ghorvahna of the Hanar and his drell assistant Commodore Kato, bedecked in the deep purple trench coat of the Kahje Defence Force.

"Good to see you." The Commodore said warmly to Gadon in particular. There was a strange reverb that the humans felt instead of heard reverberating in their lungs as Gadon and Kato briefly locked eyes. A traditional drell greeting.

He remembered pleasantly 'Uncle Kato's' visits to their home back when he was still a mere major serving under his father.

They linked arms and pulled into each other in the drell approximation of a handshake before they released.

"Gadon, Sandoval, thank you for bringing this to us, ever since my predecessor's death we had feared corruption on the citadel." Jallili interjected as he cleared his throat.

As they crossed the small distance towards the Council chambers the reality of the situation hit him. The case they had stumbled on was big, big enough to alter the galaxy at large. To the best of his knowledge the last time a Spectre became corrupt was Saren and the resulting geth incursion which still scarred the Citadel.

There in the massive Council hall sat the eponymous council in the distance. Between them were a few small steps designed to give an over all impression that any visiting them were ascending, for reasons unknown the collective species encountered associated height with power, prestige or whatever form of divine they may had believed in.

Notably the Alliance Councillor was absent, as a junior member he was not required for every meeting.

The procession stood with an armoured turian at the small jutting platform across the glass canopy above a small atrium. They nearly jumped from their skin at the sight of the spectre logo on his armour. The distance gave a sense of detachment, as though they were dealing with something ethereal and powerful. Exactly the truth.

The only difference he remembered from his one visit before the council were the armoured slats over the large, resilient windows behind them.

Gadon didn't like it he knew from Kato's description that often the Council had decided their general intention before calling such meetings leaving him and Addison little more than puppets upon a stage.

The asari began to speak, assisted by seamless amplification technology to carry their gentle voices across the divide. "Detectives, we have been reviewing the evidence you and Doctor Cybil had presented us with. Much of it was unreadable but we have been able to get certain important details."

"It is obvious." The turian began. "that you killed a Spectre in self-defence and that she had gone rogue." He then activated the play button for a pre-selected chat-log.

"Has Hagrah given up any more information, the boss is getting antsy about the leak?" the voice of an unfamiliar woman asked.

"Yeah, I've set up a meeting with his reporter friend, I'm just waiting to round up a few mercenaries before we rendezvous at the citadel." T'Laas responded.

"Excellent, our contact at the GNN came around, they aren't going to breathe a word and he's calling in the same with the other news-casters." The voice explained.

"So how'd you get the information out of him?" T'Laas enquired.

"I stuffed him into an airlock and started to depressurise it, Aria's men said they'd never seen anyone last that long." The voice responded almost proudly, the exact tone of which sent shivers up their collective spines in the assembled vertebrates.

Finally satisfied the Councillor stopped the recording, his point made.

"She has been posthumously stripped of her rank and any compensation to her family will be withheld." The salarian stated.

"This brings us to the larger matter, according to chat logs you have unearthed a large cabal within the Spectres." the Salarian began speaking again.

"Councillors this is a Spectre matter, no one else would be up to it." The turian Spectre protested in his booming, flanged voice with little need for an amplifier. As one of the few Spectres to hand he had volunteered to speak as an expert on the Council, and conveniently to cover their tracks.

"We agree." The asari said diplomatically though an edge of seriousness was weighed in her voice. Numerous visiting dignitaries and even reporters gathered around to listen. When the Council spoke the entire galaxy, in time listened.

"That is why it is the decision of the Council that you, Gadon be granted all the powers and privileges of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel."

The salarian carried on in the strange tripartite manner of their speech. "Spectres are not trained, but chosen. Individuals forged in the fire of service and battle. Those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file."

The asari resumed "Spectres are an ideal, a symbol. The embodiment of courage, determination, and self-reliance. They are the right hand of the Council, instruments of our will."

The turian, quietest of the three finally interjected. "Spectres bear a great burden. They are protectors of galactic peace, both our first and last line of defence. The safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold."

"You have served the justice of the Citadel with honour and integrity. It is for this you are the first drell to take up the mantle of the Spectres, be proud for yourself and your species." The asari finally finished.

There was a stunned look on Gadon's face that lasted for a few moments before he realised he was to speak. The last time he had stood before the Council it was amongst a number of other war heroes and required him only to stand proudly. "I will bring these people to justice." he responded with as much confidence as he could muster.

"This meeting is concluded." The salarian stated quickly before they retreated through a small side corridor into the depths of the Citadel and it's politics.

As Gadon turned to his entourage, already devoid of the turian and saw Addison beaming him a wide and encouraging smile, that he just for a moment reciprocated.

"Your mother will be so pleased." Kato said pleasantly with a slight nod and a wide smile.

"This one hopes you have realised how much closer you have come to putting us on the Council." Ghorvahna stated in it's echoing, ethereal voice. It had been pressing for Spectre-ship to advance the Hanar to the lofty seats of the Council. Situation aside Gadon was a good choice, respected, experienced and skilled, both in police work and in combat. The fact that he was partnered with one of the council races- a human was of great assistance as well.

"Remember son," The elder Jallili began sternly. "just because you're above the law doesn't't mean you're above morality." he cautioned in sage advice that Gadon might have taken in if not for the fact that Gadon was still reeling from being called son at the age of forty two.

"Follow me, we have provisions to set up." Kato said more formally as he lead the group to the central elevator.

"I had been told before hand that you would be made a spectre." Kato admitted. "I made a requisition to High-Commodore Tallma he gave us the best he could at such short notice."

"I'm not going to end up chasing after them in a freighter am I?" Gadon responded with sarcasm though the low warble of anxiety was easily picked up by Kato.

"I was able to get you an Inquisitor- Heavy Frigate and some armour." Kato responded. He remembered well his time on such a ship, as was a prerogative of his species.

Moreover he remembered it pleasantly. As frigates they were of unparalleled effectiveness. The Hanar territories were large and wealthy yet they were dependant on the decidedly less numerous, half-billion strong pool of drell for most of their combat needs outside of clerical and administrative duties. As such they needed to, and had the resources to, focus on maximising quality over quantity.

The Inquisitor was one such type, the majority of it's system were ran by extensively programmed V.I. s to reduce it's crew compliment and was defended with diamond Chemical Vapour Deposition and Cyclonic Barrier Technology, a hanar invention they were proud to say. Aside from that however it was still a frigate, a lone frigate designed specifically for fleet engagements.

"I…thank you Kato." Gadon said with a warm, blatantly familial tone.

"Detective Sandoval I'm giving you over to **Spectre **Gadon as our C-Sec liaison, do us proud." Jallili said to Addison in a decidedly more formal manner.

"Yes, Sir." Addison replied with a simple salute in typical alliance style, left handed and close palmed to leave them more distinct than the numerous armies that had come and passed before them.

Addison did however look forwards to seeing what it was really like to be a Spectre and to engage in real conflict again, the one thing she missed of her time in SWAT, though admittedly it was the largest part of that job.

The elevator opened to reveal the Hanar Illuminated Primacy's docking centres. Near to them in the first occupied berth sat the Primacy Space Vessel Illuminator based on the strange squiggles of hanar script written on it's shining silvery wing, which curved fluidly onto it's long thin and flat form, organic and rounded with nary a straight line in sight.

It was a vessel almost as old as Gadon himself yet it's glistening form, seemingly capable of flitting un-resisted through the water as easily as space and the diligent maintenance and upgrading left it just as spry as a craft manufactured last week.

Stood there in front of it was the whole crew, a mere twelve accompanied by four security guards. Each one of them was clad in the Compact's Triumph type Spec-Ops armour, it was rusty orange and dark brown, surprisingly drab in comparison to the exotic colours of the drell wearing them.

The combined effect of over a dozen stern scaled reptilian faces clad in state of the art war-gear stood before a shimmering ship of alien construction was not lost on either Gadon or Addison.

One of them stepped out from the crowd, a drell woman somewhat older than the rest and with a weary look on her face, which along with the twinned triangles inside a square with small lines jutting from each side on her larger right shoulder plate denoted her to be the captain of the ship.

There was that same deep trilling that the humans found so uncomfortable. "Spectre Gadon I'm told." She said as she linked arms with him.

"Detective Sandoval." She added as she repeated the gesture awkwardly with the human.

Addison hadn't seen many drell much less female drell. It was strange really despite the lack of breasts or hair and their inhumanly deep voices she was still decidedly womanly in structure.

"Greetings Captain Parikh." Gadon said as he focussed on the few curved and organic glyphs on the gorget of her armour. He was thankful for the eidetic memory of him and his peers or he would never have remembered his mother reading to him in Hurokh, the principal language of the drell and as ancient as the sands of Rakhana it had sprung from, in contrast to the bastardised version, embracing touches of trade-tongue and translated Hanar the Kahje drell such as his father made do with.

Like all drell learning such languages were a relatively quick affair being limited to the short process of absorbing a word and it's meaning, though being as they never ceased to think or dream in their native tongues they could never fully embrace a new one.

"Where are we to be heading, sir." She responded though Gadon could just about read the small crease of her already downward pointing mouth as small twinge of resentment at being superseded. He had both given and received that look many times before.

It was in that moment that he realised Spectre or no his C-Sec Commanders' equivalency training was a far shadow of any actual experience of shipboard operations. He also realised that he was not getting this ship but command of it for the duration of the mission whereupon it was to return to it's rightful Commander.

"Omega." Was all Gadon had to say on the matter.

Storming through the hatch to their base, nestled high in an exorbitant presidium hotel Korian was furious as he threw off the long fluttering trench coat that hid his distinctive armour. It landed in a tangled heap where it would stay without care.

"Fucking incompetents!" He bellowed simply, drawing Tethena and Joralan to attention.

"Didn't go well then?" Tethena asked in sarcasm whilst Joralan was silent, less confident of his ability to defy the Spectre Korian. Such was the relationship of the three, without a definite command structure and such divergent specialisations that their experience was no useful indicator. Instead it was the shifting metre of their personalities that determined command.

"No it didn't go well, they made him a Spectre." he snapped back with his mandibles wide and flared in anger.

"They really have dropped their standards since they let Shepard and Alenko in." Tethena quipped. Korian was in no mood and silenced her with little more than an obscenely hateful glare.

"And why didn't we have countermeasures for their decryption modules, they managed to get we're lucky we tried to be as vague as possible or they probably would have tracked it back to us." He chastised. His voice was harsh and serious and commanding.

"Be that as it may." Joralan responded with a well controlled voice that well simulated confidence. "They'll probably be going out to Omega." He explained.

Already Korian was thinking, they obviously couldn't just launch an attack on the system and it's significant defences much less hope to conquer the decadent station/nation with anything short of a real army. He could however quite easily get an assassin, this time perhaps prepared to combat them effectively.

"Joralan make contact with our hirelings on Omega, tell them to use whatever channels they have I want those two dead."


	6. Chapter 6: Shadows Upon The Secrets

Since Gadon and Addison had boarded the ship there had been a brief tour, they met the engineers, the bridge crew and the security techs and toured the ship and it's complex systems.

The layout of the frigate was different from those of the human construction Addison had briefly toured as part of an Alliance military program to help engender greater co-operation between them and C-Sec. Due to the infrequency of drell eating habits and their lack of synchronicity there was no mess hall replaced instead by larger crew compartments and supply storage, requiring them only to keep two people to a room.

Despite that Addison and Gadon had still ended up quartered in the cargo hold and sleeping on temporary beds.

It was then that he noticed the small spectre logo embossed on a buckle laying at the bottom of his property case, with a small note. "Figured you were used to flashing a badge, got you a custom piece."

Both he and Addison had been supplied with a Spectre issue defence vest styled as a set of thick waistcoats. Designed to allow agents the ability to engage in undercover sting operations with a higher effectiveness and survival ratio it was even capable of generating a field that would retain atmosphere for emergency space walks.

By the time they were geared up and on the bridge they were on final approach to the mass relay, which after a few jumps would send them to Omega.

The entire Crew looked at them. Well it was obvious really that they were looking at Peeli Gadon, the first drell Spectre who just so happened to be standing next Addison Sandoval, C-Sec officer.

Their eyes were alight with admiration and with hypothesis. When the asari and salarians formed the spectres a more equal society soon followed. When the turians became spectres during the krogan rebellions they soon won the council seat. The Humans experienced a similar situation after the geth incursions. If that correlation held true then the Hanar may well be about to take their place on the council.

It was a long rectangular control centre with Captain Parikh sat in the centre over a large controll pannel and flanked by five crewed terminals.

The room was windowless and it's consoles filled with intricate and complex holographic displays.

"Captain." Gadon said simply as he walked out of the room and onto the floor of the control centre.

"Kav, take us out." Parikh commanded to the man to her front left, a tall youthful and rakish man who cradled over his console like a spider.

In a moment he had fired the retro-thrusters to manouever the craft into the correct position to be propelled by the massive, alien, and powerful machinery of the mass relay. It was strange that despite the massiveness of space there was a use que of ships patiently waiting to be flung across a galaxy faster than the laws of physics by an overpowered and unknown device built millenia ago. Truly one definition of sapience is being intelligent enough to rationalise doing something so mind bogglingly stupid.

As a military vessel the Illuminator was able to cut across that que for the sake of emergency, such as rogue Spectres. Kav darted between the veritable maelstrom of shifting vessels each getting into position for their launches. He was also having to contend from the untranslatable slurry of expletives being delivered to them for cutting. Nonetheless they were unlikely to attack a military grade vessel with anything more than words.

Piloting was always a tricky affair due to the Serpent Nebula's interference. Kav's webbed though deft hands were swift to control the nimble ship into the correct position.

"Initiating mass relay." Kav said simply in a deep and warbling voice, notably with an inaudible reverb to suggest that rumbled in his throat as an almost untranslatable part of his language which Addison's implant translated as well as possible.

Within seconds arcs of energy tangled across the ship, momentarily interfering with the sensory systems of the Illuminator as it was grappled and then flung at beyond-infinite speeds to cover unimaginable distances in an imperceptibly short amount time. For all the things no man, not least of all Gadon could comprehend the effects of using the mass relay was remarkably simple. One moment they were under the friendly arms of his home the Citadel and the succour of it's arms. The next they were in the Eagle Nebula. The next they were in the midst of Omega, it's dark reflection.

Where the Citadel possessed a beautiful and symmetrical form Omega was a nonsensical mess of haphazard and shoddy construction. Where the Citadel sat calmly rotating in empty space, Omega was defiantly stationary amidst the tumbling rock of the Shabrik system. Where the Citadel swarmed the enigmatic keepers that dutifully maintained it Omega was infested with the vicious vorcha, a decidedly less noble life form.

"Than'Kala." Comns Officer Janeus said with a small note of shock on her rasping voice.

"Than'Kala?" Addison whispered with an enquiring tone.

"It means Dark-Passage, their word for Omega." Gadon replied in kind.

"This is Omega Control, state your business or be destroyed." A batarians's voice responded in their traditionally harsh manner.

"Omega's tightened it's security I see" Parikh observed as she reclined in her seat. "Put them on." she ordered. She didn't **like **submitting to a criminal's custom's inspection, she didn't **like** having to go to Omega. But she knew that the station was heavily defended beyond a single frigate's ability's to counter and attacking it would bring the fury of the Terminus systems crashing down on the Primacy and despite her profession she most definitely **liked **peace.

"This is the PSV Illuminator, we have no business, so far as the garmagh know." Garmagh, being the most insulting term the batarians possessed for the hanar and sharing a name with an invertebrate parasite commonly found on Khar'shan. Most in the Compact would be too devoted to even refer to their scarlet saviours just for the sake of misdirection. Most Compact Captains did not however have the potential fate of the known galaxy to deal with.

There was a deep coarse laugh that filled the speakers. "Very well docking approved, sending you the docking co-ordinates and bill ." The traffic controller responded.

Within moments Kav was taking them in, sidestepping the bulk of an outgoing super freighter and a redirected asteroid before gently pulling in to rest at a dock surprisingly near the station centre.

"We are docked." Kav reported with fading focus in his voice as he sat away from his screen, it's deep green purple shining against his bright green scales.

"Then make us proud Gadon." Parikh said as she stood and linked arms for a short moment.

They checked their submachine-guns, a pair of black painted M-12 Locusts, which like the majority of the Compact's equipment was supplied by the high-end Kassa Fabrications. Quickly the slipped them on magnetic holsters on the inside of their jackets alongside their pistols.

Buildings jutted down from the shadowed ceiling and up from the floor like the crooked teeth of some aged monster in an old Rakhana fairy tale. It too was dingy and littered with flyers and holographic adverts for everything, ranging from cults to groceries to strip-clubs and bordellos.

In the centre of this obscene plaza sat a towering building that ran from as far down as anyone could see to as far up as any could fathom. Flanked by screens of over zoomed dancing women and surging with the muted bass sat a sign.

Afterlife. The 'capital building' as it were of the damned hive. Gadon had read reports of afterlife, every officer had. Within lay an asari older than the Compact, and vastly more vicious.

"What a shit-hole." Was Addison's disgusted observation as she starred at it's tacky, flame infested front.

"Indeed, however people take poorly to being told they're criminal scum, so perhaps a modicum of tact is advised." Gadon retorted.

"It's still I shit-hole." Addison defended.

"Absolutely, shall we go in?" Gadon responded glibly.

There was a towering elcor stood in front of the door. He was a strange creature compared to the other elcor he had seen on the Citadel. A cigarette jutted from the flaps of his strange mouth. His skin was scarred and pitted with exceedingly ineffective bullet wounds. The fruits of his work this day were no less apparent based on the smears on his knuckles which were supporting his multi-ton weight.

They quickly walked past the gathered crowd that spilled off the dirty steps and along the edge of the plaza. Various slurs were pelted at them, though little else. They carried them with a harsh professionalism that told the Omega citizenry that they were not to be tampered with, at least not without backup.

"With contempt: what do you want?" the deep voice of the elcor questioned for a moment.

His questioning ceased when Gadon turned to face him and more importantly presented the Spectre logo to him.

"We're here for information." Gadon replied simply.

"Nervously: Go right ahead Aria will want to see this."

As they walked in they could hear the Turian at the front of the line railing at the startled doorman.

"Why the hell can they cut in line?" he asked angrily.

"With derision: When you are a fucking Spectre you can cut in line" He responded just before the closing door and thumping base silenced even his projected baritone.

They quickly crossed the small tube leading to the main bar. Loud and tacky techno thrummed in their ears, especially to the sensitive hearing of the drell attuned to the low bass they found in this music.

The room was filled with clubbers of all species from the humans to the asari to even the odd quarian, all twisting to a constant rhythm or slouching over a bar or soliciting all manner of 'working girls.'

They were a plain contrast in their high quality clothing, moreover the way they carried themselves, with their stiff posture and un-amused faces whilst they walked through the crowds with one objective. Aria.

They ascended the small steps, once again a deliberate effort to leave the customer in an inferior position. Indeed it was in a way a grim reflection of the Council chambers he thought, rather than being breezy and open to show the public control of the Council it was instead cramped and partitioned to better conceal a number of clandestine deals. The tight corners also prevented anyone from getting in a good firing position without walking right up to Aria and her henchmen leaving the only viable assassins as suicide bombers, which weren't exceptionally likely among mercenaries. That being said she'd had to do a crowd dive more than once over her tenure.

"Detective Gadon." Aria said simply and without moving from her slouch across the pliant leather seats. "Detective Sandoval." she added as she dismissed the 'businessmen' to her flanks with the flicks of her fingers. They silently and swiftly acquiesced milling out quickly to the pressing crowd beneath.

"Yes." Gadon said simply and glibly. Anto raised one of his upper brow ridges in surprise at his lack of awe.

"C-Sec doesn't mean much here, Detectives." She weighted the last word as she leaned in and took a more attentive stance. It was then that she caught sight of the logo stencilled onto his arm buckle. The symbol of the Spectres was rarely worn as impersonating them carried a hefty prison sentence in council space and could easily get one shot within her 'beloved' Terminus. She had dealt with Spectres both literally and figuratively over time and knew that one way or another they were of better use as allies than as enemies.

"But then you aren't C-Sec anymore." She added as she thought. The addition of a drell to their enigmatic ranks would most likely have been a well publicised event even in the Terminus systems. From that she could only determine then that this was an extremely inexperienced Spectre, though she knew by his profile that he was no mere recruit.

Aside from that killing Spectres generally attracted more Spectres and the last thing she needed was more military types scuttling around the station.

"No, I suppose not." Gadon replied calmly, he knew via C-Sec Intelligence of Aria's rather probative negotiation technique.

"So, what brings you to **my** station." She weighted the word possessively, she had held this station for centuries and intended to hold it for centuries still.

"We have reason to believe that some of your men are holding a batarian turncoat." Gadon responded, he was careful not to levy accusation, or for that matter to sound as though he were too trusting of the pirate-queen.

"I may know what you're talking about." She responded in a manner that he found vaguely threatening. "Anto, get the prisoner." She commanded. The batarian immediately complied in the same way he had within the Hegemony Shock-Troopers.

There was an awkward silence as they stood waiting for a few moments before the enforcer returned with company gripped at the back of the neck. He threw the prisoner to the floor, an over worked bundle of nerves to the floor. Gadon surprised a wince as he saw the poor man- a human spluttering on the floor, his grey flecked hair was matted and greasy, there was dry blood on his clothes and both his hands were broken. By the way he balled up on the floor it would seem a few ribs were cracked also.

"This is the man who had undercut me with this little side venture." She explained with malice in her voice.

"I-I only wanted t-to pay my debts." He snivelled back at her, blood dripping from a busted lip.

"I don't give a shit" she responded coldly in a voice one might use to discuss the weather. "You should have known better."

"I'm s-s-so sorry." He responded his voice half caught in his throat. Gadon studied the man he had old war scars, on his muscular body and a few tattoos, one of note was the stylised N7 logo on the centre of his back. He was certain that whatever had broken humanity's foremost spec-ops team had been truly horrid.

"Sorry doesn't cut it." She flicked him with a biotic field that flipped him around to look him in the eyes.

"Well Detectives, ask your questions." She said with a chilling calm that caused the scales on Gadon's neck to tighten in discomfort.

He looked the man, the poor nameless man in the eyes for a second and resisted his sympathetic urge to assist. It was irrational, this man was a traitor to the Alliance, most likely an entirely immoral mercenary and almost certainly would have taken what passed for an innocent life. Despite that there was no real need for torture, Aria almost certainly had the skills base for a good interrogation and if not then painless chemical assistance would be fine. Most of all it was an acknowledged fact that torture was often an unreliable source of information. Taking all of that in it was clear that there was only one reason they were doing this, to set an example of Omega's famous law "Don't fuck with Aria."

_This isn't right _he thought as he saw the broken and bloody man, a sentient being used as propaganda, as a tool. It was clear that he was dealing with more than the profit mongering organised criminals of the Citadel stealing, kidnapping and even murdering but always in the interests of credits. These however were secessionists and terrorists seeking to exact an iron rule over the decadent populace with a cadre of psycho's for hire.

"Where is the batarian named Hagrah." The drell calmly asked.

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know." He grovelled back at the entourage and it's inquisitive reptile.

"Please Gadon if I could get to such a…valuable commodity I simply would have sold him to you." Aria responded as she crossed her legs and assumed a posture both Addison and Gadon found far too regal for her position. Such was often the conceit of any criminal who had found their five minutes (or five centuries) of infamy and believed that all of a sudden purloined luxuries and blood stained trinkets made them superior.

"Th-they moved him off the station, please that's all I know." The man replied in between deep coughs that flecked the floor with a touch more blood.

"Do you know where on the station they took him." Gadon asked politely. He was also quite sure that Anto had muttered the batarian word for pussy.

"I-I already told them." He snivelled finally.

"It's true, storeroom eighty six Forminari ring, we didn't find anything valuable." Anto interjected.

"With all due respect your job is committing crimes not uncovering them." Gadon responded. All four of Anto's eyes narrowed to resentful slits in objection to that single comment.

"Very well, I was getting bored of this any way." She said as she gestured to the turian stood opposite Anto with his battered old pistol in hand. "Resume his punishment, I'll tell you when to stop." she commanded bluntly and without a tremble of emotion.

"No-no, please!" He begged, a shaking hand stained with blood and vomit reaching out and imploring with what had to have been the last bit of hope or humanity left in his shell-shocked form. He was met by stony faces, some from indifference some from contempt and on the part of the Detectives indecision.

It was strange, surreal really to think that it was only the pounding music outside, somewhat dulled by sound reducing materials enabled such horror to occur so very nearly in public. He did sometimes wonder how many of the people below would actually care or how much of it was to prevent anyone selling information.

"Thank you." Gadon said in his deep voice, thankful for it's ability to cover up his crack of disgust at the poor man's treatment. Simultaneously Gadon and Addison stood from their seats exchanged polite nods and departed.

"You forgot the door code, it's six-one-three-four." Anto stated condescendingly.

"Why didn't you just kill them." Anto asked as he glared angrily at the back of Gadon's striped head and imagined unloading his pistol on the officer. He so despised those types, mindlessly serving some impersonal force and believing that it put them above all others.

"I pay you to shoot things not think about them." Aria responded bitterly. He had point though, active Spectres tended not to be allowed on the station by her or the Council and everyone knew it. The only reason they would be prepared to deploy one even under such a low profile would be for fear of a Spectre operation already in the Terminus systems. If that was the case, as the Detective seemed to imply then she couldn't afford the risk of them being so near to her. Moreover the Council was unlikely to sanction sending a Spectre group in the first place which could only have meant they had gone rogue. The last time that happened the Terminus systems were almost lost to Saren's geth invasion. Obviously the simplest way to take down a Spectre would be to let Gadon do his job, at least a Spectre was gone that way.

Gadon and Addison stepped out onto the plaza and truth be told were pleased to be rid of that place.

Addison had killed, as almost any C-Sec detective had, and even before then her SWAT career had called for such things. What it did not however call for was torture, that crime still held above all others in the Alliance and within C-Sec as an automatic crime against sapience. Unlike murder it could never be committed in a fit of passion, or in self defence, or simply by accident.

"I had heard stories about Omega but…that?" Addison asked with a slightly shocked voice, held in check only by years of experience with the galaxy's worst.

"To be honest I'm quite surprised I didn't end up cleaning that man off my jacket." Gadon responded without an iota of mirth in his gravelly voice. Addison could tell how unnerved he was after almost a day around him, the way the checked all the clasps of his coat, the was he nictitated his eyes and the slight dulling of his scales.

For a moment it was strange, almost amusing to see the austere Detective, no Spectre shaken by his sympathies was, odd to say the least after seeing her fair share of crime fighting sociopaths that little moment of vulnerability was rather….endearing.


	7. Chapter 7: Bleak Suspicions

Gadon and Addison had been walking for what had began to feel like forever as they edged down the bowels of the crowded station. The station seemed to be getting even warmer and danker then it already had been as the populace increased and further strained the neglected environmental systems.

They descended down grimy steps and hopped into scratched and vandalised elevators and despite the map of their omni-tool were still left wandering in circles due to the constant interdiction of shoddy construction or maintenance sights. This, Gadon found was one of the more grating aspects of Omega, whilst the Citadel was complex it was still structured and predictable, assisted further by the aero-shuttles allowing someone to theoretically be any where within the city-station within thirty minutes.

It was an hour and a half later and his considerable frustration was beginning to boil over in his tense arms and balled fists that they finally reached the storage complex. The door like many others was fitted with a complex locking mechanism this one however was new, shiny and unscratched. Among the battered walls and second hand merchandise it was perhaps the most incongruous thing he could think of.

Gadon quickly typed in the number and was immediately greeted by a tangle of dark rooms and twisting corridors which partially lit themselves as they passed by.

They stepped into a small dark room, the only one lit through it's glass doors. Every drawer was open and every container stripped bare, evidently Anto's impression of an investigation. Despite it's lack of gore it was obviously a torture den to trained eyes, the grey walls and floors were probably the among cleanest on Omega and reeked of antiseptic, clearly in the efforts of covering their tracks. Even then there were still scratch marks along the floor and in stray spots flecks of blood were still visible, obviously Spectres excelled in numerous fields aside from sanitation.

There were no computers to provide such easy evidence as they would prefer.

There were however a cornucopia of clues if one was attentive.

"Switching to micro scanners." Gadon stated as he drew his omni-tool and began to scan the room, relaying the information to the small optical implants issued to all detectives. Just as he suspected it lit up the scene in all it's graphic detail. There were streaks of blood both human and in much larger concentrations batarian, suggesting an escape attempt. What looked to be traces of faeces and urine were also streaked about the room to suggest a lack of toiletries. More than that there looked to be what could be considered the saddest of all evidence, the specific chemical makeup of batarian tears were present in small amounts.

The smudges all thinned out in a fairly neat line on the floor to suggest mass effect barriers had been used, generally considered to be far too expensive for mercenaries and requiring significant backing though they did produce a seamless, inescapable cell when properly handled.

They certainly had the correct building, such was a disturbing concern on Omega however they couldn't really use that to determine Hagrah's whereabouts.

"Gadon I found something." Addison said as she waved him over with her long, athletic arms.

"Yes?" He enquired as he leaned in next to her crouched over a cheap M-3 predator, obviously not the weapon of a Spectre or their top-notch hirelings, most likely treated as a disposable thing. That didn't stop it having such technology as an atmospheric compensator.

"This pistol was adjusted for atmosphere." Addison responded as she relayed the data to their omni tools.

"That rules out any stations, check the weather data, against extra net records…Addie." he added hesitantly and to his minor discomfort.

There was a slight pause as she fed the data through. "Surface gravity one point one G, one point four atmospheres, humidity twenty nine percent," She read out more to herself than anyone else. Though instantly she had narrowed it down to a garden world the computer returned a more precise answer milliseconds later.

"Trident." She proclaimed.

"Makes sense, the guards seemed to have been human, they would blend in and the locals aren't too likely to care for a batarian after a terror threat from them a few years ago." Gadon responded, displaying his eidetic memory as he flawlessly recalled all information he had from the planet Trident whilst neglecting his knowledge of tridents as weapons.

"And it has very little land, which means it's very sparse." Addison responded as they built up their theory.

"More than that as I understand it they have a number of underwater mining facilities, not easily found by sensors." Gadon responded.

"Why do you know that." Addison responded, her surprise strengthening her accent.

"When my father left the Compact he took up mercenary work, his company sent him and his squad to clear out a mining post taken over by a turian cult." He responded with a note of pride. He had worried when his father left the Compact, fifty he thought was hardly the right age to be gallivanting across the galaxy as a soldier of fortune. Every time he saw him leave on his shuttle he worried that it would be the day something went wrong and he was never seen again and yet mission after mission, day after day, year after year he returned, through his graduation from C-Sec academy, through his promotion to Detective, and then when he was finally prepared to retire he did so and he thought that would be the end of it.

He still remembered the news, and everything that came after it as he would be forced to by his bitter-sweet biology, he and Agoriun where celebrating another case when his omni-tool rang. That big, grey-scaled soldier felled by something as undignified as a shuttle crash seemed somewhat…discordant. Nonetheless this was not the time for emotion and he pushed the thought to the back of his mind.

"Ah." Addison responded as she picked up the slight shifting of his scaled face near to a look of sorrow though admirably restrained.

"Come on time is of the essence." Gadon said as he stood and headed across the small floor of the little room to leave the room again. Unlike Addison who would be swift to leave the room and put the ordeal behind her Gadon, owing to his eidetic memory could do no such thing and had no reason to try granting an impression of disinterest.

As they walked out Gadon heard something with the his sensitive 'ears' just faintly but it was an unmistakable footfall that belonged not to him or Addison.

That there was something….off, something that didn't quite match with his mind's flawless image of the room as they had left it.

There was something off with one of the multitude shadows that draped over it, they should have been straight there was a bump, a small, indistinct, irregular bump like the shadow of thick glass but one present nonetheless.

He held a hand behind his back and signed, in C-Sec sign language to Addison a warning to halt.

There was someone there.

He had heard of tactical cloaks, advanced technologies that made a lone assassin invisible and almost undetectable even to the most advanced of scanning equipment for a short time.

He activated the scanning application on his omni-tool and still found nothing, or rather the absence of things. In the smears of antiseptic boot-prints became apparent and they were going closer.

More on instinct than anything else he ducked as he noted the boot steps falling faster.

He heard a deep grunting as a slip of wind he assumed to be a passing blade brushed his face.

A moment later there was a trilling as the advanced technologies gave out to recharge and to vent the contained heat given off by the wearer and the apparatus.

It was a humanoid figure clad in some sort of skin tight hard suit covered in a material he didn't recognise. On his face, covered in a recon hood there were four distinct eyes marking him as a batarian and they subtly glowed a warm amber.

Addison came storming in and was about to deliver a bioticaly assisted punch that might had sent the assailant flying but was met with a large hand grabbing her face. A powerful jolt of electricity shot from the glove and for a second her entire nervous system felt as though it were burning before twin suns and then she simply fell to the floor.

Without looking the incapacitation monitor on Gadon's cranial implant system alerted him that she was unconscious though thankfully she was not in fact dead due to the exact tone of the warning beeps.

Content that the secondary objective was down and could be retrieved for questioning the assassin lunged again at Gadon with enough ferocity to prevent him from drawing either of his weapons, instead he was dodging and weaving from a long knife he recognised as a Tarsechi-9 combat knife and realised that he had finally rapped up the question of who exactly was Nyatta O'Quinn's killer.

The assassin went for the knife and had his hand deflected by a quick knock from Gadon, followed by a swift kick to the assassin's genitals that actually caused the man to raise to tiptoes under the brunt of it.

He heard a groan of pain but little else as the assassin delivered an upper cut that left a gash on Gadon's chin and sent him stumbling back a second.

Gadon gathered his wits and struck squarely at the Assassin and was surprised that he simply bent backwards at the last second like a rubber band, obviously as a result of advanced genetic modifications to improve ability and reaction time.

The assassin lunged with the knife, and Gadon dodged it. Or thought he had. Sticking from his flank the knife had dug into his body and sat there like an errant branch.

He gasped dryly in shock as he felt the cold hard blade sticking into his organs and felt the terror as the organic mechanisms that sustained his life were imperilled by it.

He staggered backwards and felt the warm red blood on his hands as he groped the wound and tried to suck down enough air to scream in agony but he was in fact incapable of doing so as every time he'd try his muscles would shear against the blade and stop him swiftly.

The assassin however was keen to capitalise the opening and grabbed at the drell's neck, lifting him with one large hand and still with that hand at his neck he thrust him onto the desk as Gadon struggled to gulp down breaths as he squirmed and felt the knife twist slightly in his body.

Indeed he was sure that were it not for the unique construction of his hyoid bone he would already have had his throat crushed.

"I'm kinda glad of what happened, I've never killed a Spectre." The assassin said in a deep menacing voice that was shared by most of his kin.

Despite his resilient throat his vision was still blurring and narrowing and his hoarse breathing sounded as though it were miles away. He could feel the end settling in and he was not prepared to go.

"Clearly no." Gadon croaked in response. Before the batarian could figure out what he meant Gadon wrenched the blade free, to his considerable agony and in one swift motion lodged it cleanly in the base of the assassin's neck.

They both tumbled yelling and screaming to the floor. The Assassin made a feeble effort to reach towards him with dying gasps but that was met with a swift double-kick to his face which caused his amber optics to flicker and dim as Gadon scrabbled away.

The Assassin struggled to lift himself and then fell over dead. As Gadon struggled to his feet he heard a small though steadily increasing beeping. Fearing a bomb he mustered what of his strength he could and dragged Addison out beyond the precipice of the door.

His implant's medi-gel system was busy distributing the life saving compound to the wound and feeding it into his internal organs via the implant at the base of his spine. It was at that moment that a loud boom confirmed his suspicions and blew out the door.

He struggled against the gel's anaesthetic properties though as the adrenaline drained from his system he was aware that a blackout was inevitable. He quickly activated a stimulant injection with his omni-tool and injected it into Addison before he finally fell into a restless sleep in an awkward posture.

Addison woke groggily a few minutes later and saw Gadon lying there with a small pool of blood around him. Immediately she inspected the wound via her omni-tool, as first-aid protocol dictated and was relieved to find that his omni-gel dispersers were working well and could hold him together until they got to the _Illuminator_.

Gadon awoke surrounded by a bright light in a clean sterile room. Whilst some might had feared they were facing some afterlife or another he presumed, correctly that he was in the _Illuminator_'s med bay.

"How did I get here." Gadon asked as he sat up and noted that he was in fact quite naked aside from the sheet covering his lower half.

"That would be me." She responded gently as she got his attention.

Addison looked at him from the medical bed she had been sitting on, waiting for him to awaken. Her eyes were heavy and she stiffled a yawn suggesting that hours had passed.

Gadon's slender, sinewy chest was bare though his scaled skin had obviously met combat before, a trio of long vicious claw marks ran across his chest and curved around his side in conjunction to various burns and more minor marks littering his striped arms and shoulders. A large surgical patch over his freshly tended wound kept in place by sterile gauze.

"Thank you, I can't imagine hauling me all the way back to the docks was easy." He responded as he shifted his weight and the last of the sedatives wore off.

"Where's the ship?" He asked as he rubbed his head.

"We're still docked with Omega." she replied.

"Captain." Gadon said as he tapped his comns implant. "Set a course for the Hoplos system." he added with his voice distinctly more gentle than usual.

"Of course." She acquiesced before shifting slightly in her chair to begin writing up her log of the Omega trip as protocol required though they were often Spartan details used more for legal documentation than as any form of commemoration.

Gadon acknowledged her with a deep vibration that barely transmitted over the radio.

The ship departed and for the what was technically the largest part of the journey they were flung by the mass effect network instantly. Then they began the long arduous process of crossing the stars in the ominously named Hades Nexus, a week long process.

By the second day of transit Addison had taken to running the ship's impressive codex of drell culture through a translator and combing over them to better integrate herself into the crew. Though she trusted Gadon to be forthcoming enough by his own admission he didn't share a planet with them much less a culture.

Gadon meanwhile was busy pouring over the details of the planet Trident and it's short though impressive history. He had a rather simple look on his bluish face as he scrolled down the articles at a fair pace, though he could remember every image of looking at the words on screen he was still forced to actually read them in order to understand it properly.

The study continued with only the interruption of Addison's departures to fuel her biotics and the strain they put upon her metabolism.

Eventually they did give in to wariness as their eyes grew heavy and their body clocks, damaged somewhat by their time on the citadel none the less encouraged them now to sleep.

Gadon did not share his crewmates' paranoia and slipped under the thin cover of his bedding in nothing more than underwear, leaving his boots on the floor, leg and all as he got onto the unyielding and uncomfortable bed, a far cry from the high tech variable consistency materials that had been in his ruined apartment.

"When I got to the offices, back on the citadel Sadria said that you were having a rough year." Addison began. "What did she mean."

Gadon rolled from his position flat on his back to look at her from across the small gap between their beds, divided by stacked cases that served as a nightstand. There was a slight pause as he thought, not out of hesitation simply to provide the best way to disseminate the news.

"Well first I lost my leg." He responded with little emotion as he had long since come to terms with such things. "Then after that my girlfriend left me." he added with a surprisingly nonplussed reaction. "And then my last partner retired of course." He finally added, keen to remove any notes of accusation from his voice.

"Oh, sorry I shouldn't had bought it up." She responded.

"No need, as I understand it the reason humans don't like to discuss certain things because they don't want to remember it." He responded analytically. "I don't exactly have that problem." Gadon added with what seemed to be a wry grin.

"How do people live like that." She responded with a note of surprise.

"Well most of my species like to think they're detached from this world and that in the end it'll all work out." He responded, aside from his clipped accent scepticism was thick in his voice.

"And you."

"Bad things happen, we learn from them. Simple " He responded.

Beneath the churning blue of Trident's endless ocean something bad, nay horrible was occurring in concordance with a shadowed plan.

Hagrah was screaming in torment as he struggled limply against his restraints though more from instinct than reason, they had shown him the pressing ocean through the tiny porthole of the airlock as he was marched in.

A trio of Salarians marched in, two of them were obviously top of the line mercenaries and equipped with the weapons and arms befitting them. In the middle however was one of the galaxy's rarest and most powerful creatures, a salarian Sub-Dalatrass. Rannadril Ghan Swa Fulsoom Karaten Narr Bel Sutili was her full and most unwieldy name.

Her body was thin and rail like and covered with the finest silks and jewels, describing the honoured regent of a very large very powerful dynasty, such as she was. Where matriarchs pressed for milenia for their goals she had spent some eighteen years- an incredibly long time for the salarians trying, as her dynasty's mother had before her to oust the humans from the galaxy, exacerbated further by their ascension to the Council.

What she just could not understand was why a **batarian** of all things would go to such ends, face such adversity and sacrifice so much.

To begin with she had thought that he was a disillusioned private or a credit chasing spy-for-hire. Instead he was a Colonel in the Hegemony's Intelligence and Recon forces and afforded the manors, tittles and wealth that position afforded.

"Y-you know I'm not…" He winced as he took a shallow breath and felt the effects of a broken rib he had acquired during his tenure "giving you any m-more….information." he added with little confidence and a note of shame that his weakness had already seen one woman dead.

Sutili took on a menacing smile as she drew out a long syringe of a potent, almost fail-safe truth system specially tailored to his personal biology and to counter the various genetically and cybernetically retrofitted countermeasures he possessed.

"Oh you will."

Hagrah may once had laughed off those words, he possessed any number of implanted pain suppressants, stimulants, sedatives, anti toxins and immunisations to fight off almost every known torture in the galaxy.

Unfortunately it was all equipped to a mere man who panics as any other might when they feel the air draining from them as they struggle for breath. He however should had known better, no answer he gave would ever see him out of here and he would need to provide them vastly more for them to dispose of him. He felt another pang of emotion as he weighed his options.

It was fear.

It was weakness.


	8. Chapter 8: Beneath the Ocean Red

Addison had finished pulling on her armour and was tying up her normally shoulder length hair into a more professional top knot which exposed a tangle of small scars at the base of her neck.

"You know" Gadon said as he pulled on his newly repaired defence vest. "As I understand from your records you used to be an L2 biotic, I'm no doctor but as I understand it such a surgery is incredibly dangerous." He added.

She stopped in her tracks as the words struck her ears and she turned around to look at him for a moment. "I had rather an…unfortunate reaction to the L2," She looked away "emotional outbursts, paranoia, for a while I thought it was just the stress of the job and they medicated it…until I began having biotic fits."

Gadon was speechless. This entire time he had believed her to be some overly lucky biotic who had just flitted easily through the echelons of law enforcement with no real effort, yet here lay the price of her biotics.

He had seen the results of a biotic fit once in an asari suspected of murdering her partner. There was blue everywhere and smears of turian around their demolished apartment.

"I-I should have guessed…I'm sorry." He responded like a punished child, both embarrassed by that gap in his deduction and by his completely tactless method of questioning, too accustomed to his own approach to the past.

"Well you didn't know." she responded as she saw his nervous smile, barring the paired canines of a drell's upper jaw.

"I suppose I really should get to know you better….partner." He responded in contrast and contradiction to his usually tightly wound manner. Addison could tell from the way he avoided looking her in the eyes and his stiff posture that he was uncomfortable with the sentence.

"There isn't so much to say, my brother's the family favourite." She responded with a mix of self deprecation and bitterness as she tightened her almond eyes.

"Well unless you're brother happens to be some sort of crime fighting genius I can't see him competing." He responded derisively and with a muted compliment.

"No, he's with the alliance, like most of my family, flew in the Battle of the Citadel." She responded with grudging pride.

"Be that as it may he's just some fighter pilot, you're partnered with a Spectre." He responded more by way of encouragement than of pride.

"Thanks, I'm sure they'll love me running around with an alien super-spy." She responded sardonically. "No offence."

Deep beneath the lapping blue of trident's salted ocean Hagrah was twisting in delirium as the chemicals of the serum took affect. His own implants were busy combating it and the toxic fall out had served to skewer his perception of time. His nerves were burning and time seemed to be whipping past him too fast to fathom as the already hasty salarians seemed to dart past his half asleep eyes, tear filled eyes as a chemically induced depression shattered his will. Though he might resist for a time such a hopelessness was still sufficient to weaken his will to resist.

Sutili could tell this was the time to strike. At this point they were growing to the point where the need for the information was growing critical.

"Wake him." She said as she ordered a medical technician to inject another chemical cocktail into him before rotating the slab he lay on to leave him in an appropriation of the standing position.

His head hung limply over his shackled neck but he was quite awake now.

"What do you want?" He asked with a defeated voice, withdrawn from the agonising world.

"Oh, this time I have something to tell you." She responded in a saccharine manner. As she edged closer to him with a practiced elegance.

Hagrah didn't answer, he merely looked up and tilted his head to the right, a weak sign of his defiance to her keen black eyes.

"You will soon be…released." She said as she held her hands together in front of her, by the way she uttered the word it was clear he was to be released from life rather than the compound. "Lord-General Damalik tells me that the Janissary Project is to commence soon."

"Not…without…the codes." Hagrah responded weakly and between shallow, quivering breaths as he squinted against the bright light held directly above him.

"And that is why you will tell me." she said as she had the slab returned to it's more bed like position.

"Just remember I want him alive enough to talk." She said as she strode over to a chair in the shadowed rear of the large circular room and took her view as white clad batarians leant by the Lord-General began to use their 'Advanced Interrogation Techniques' upon him.

He screamed as experimental compound were applied to his wounded, half naked body.

He spat and swore at his 'countrymen' as they performed their treatments, burning blisters into his bare chest and arms.

Sutili left, not for disgust but for the high priority call she was receiving via her Omni-tool.

She stepped out and quickly walked along the lengthy corridor of the large base, which sat like a shelf jutting from the wall of an unnamed and underwater cliff face. Once upon a time it had been an independently owned research base and as such still held a number of empty laboratories and disused quarters within it's stark walls which served only to grant it the austere impression required of a torture den.

The reinforced hatch, designed to hold out the ocean if need be, retracted swiftly as she stepped into the small holographic communications room as the appearance of the Lord-General appeared.

True to the title his raiment was highly decorated, with medal pins, medallions, aiguillettes and sashes over his velveteen-black uniform.

He retained a formal posture, tilting his head to the left for a moment and then began speaking.

"The Janissary project is in place and ready. We will be needing the codes." He stated bluntly.

"I expect he shall fully break within the week Lord-General." She responded in a respectful though forced manner. She didn't care much for this batarian or any of them but after a few clandestine alliances they were far better for the salarians, she and her mother reasoned than the humans.

"That will have to suffice, we can maintain cover for another month but they are conspicuous." Damalik explained.

Within the torture chamber Hagrah's pain suppressant implant was finally able to compensate enough that he could gain proper awareness. The enzymes on his arms whilst also burning horribly were sufficient to weaken the metallic clasps holding him.

The moment was now as their backs were turned to gather more toxic salves. He performed a practiced manipulation of his hands to trigger the electro magnetic pulsers in his wrists. There was a jolt and the clamps released.

By the time he had wrenched the neck and leg clamps loose his tormentors turned round to see a very tall, very muscular, very angry batarian intelligence agent.

One of them went to run and was quickly hit in the throat, causing him to gasp and groan and clutch at his throat. A moment later Hagrah wrapped his hands around the mans head and his eyes went wide. With one powerful twist he snapped the man's spine and left his crippled and dying body to slump awkwardly to the floor.

The second of the two technicians lunged at him with a syringe of toxic enzymes. He dodged her and as she shot past him her kicked upwards, driving his knee into her tender stomach to hear a satisfying grunt of pain.

She swung a scalpel blindly at him, intending to gouge or slash at his exposed flesh with one hand and poison him with the the syringe in the other hand.

He dodged again and kicked powerfully into her side hard enough to shift her sidewards. As she bent over in pain he grappled with her, once again going for the head. He got hold and slammed her head against the metal slab he had been shackled to. Stray chemicals burnt her eyes and the blunt trauma cracked her skull again and again until she died of it.

He took a moment to check them for weapon and came up with only a pair of scalpels to use.

He ran out of the room, foolishly unlocked.

The sentries stood directly outside had no time to react to his presence as he ran out and thrust the scalpels deep into their necks.

It was a wise move to have the salarians serve as the troopers rather than his own species to prevent him appropriating an environment suit and simply leaving or making use of the protection afforded of such a hard suit.

There was nothing, however to stop him from appropriating the downed mercenary's shotgun, ideal for the choked corridors of the base. He grinned for a minute as he remembered fondly his first mission as a Knight-Captain fresh out of the Hegemony War College. Back then he was tasked with combating a group of krogan mercenaries supporting a terrorist group in their space, a moral mission and one that made him proud of his uniform.

Time however wore on and soon he was combating freedom fighters, human colonists in the traverse, tax-dodging freighter captains, and eventually ended up monitoring disobedient nobles.

The sign on the wall said, in English which due to 'know-thy-enemy' training he was quite capable to read even without his translator implants.

He ran pounding forwards and then stopping at every corridor to peer slowly round for signs of the salarians.

At the corridor finally leading to the communications room there were a pair of salarians.

He didn't need to peer out past this corner, he knew the salarians would want to protected but would be far too possessive and paranoid to have them be in the room to listen to her.

He popped out quickly and unloaded two rounds of the M-67 Solo, a dated edition of a salarians STG weapon with exploding rounds into the guard's body the first collapsing his barriers and the second collapsing his skull before he could react. His third shot clipped the other salarians leg and nearly took it off. The guard managed to press the alarm button before Hagrah loomed over and finished him off.

Inside the communications room Sutili was bathed in red emergency lights which had been installed primarily to warn of hull breaches though apparently a renegade operative was also an appropriate emergency.

"What is that?" Damalik said as he deactivated his holographic atmosphere, though he maintained an audio connection.

There was a delay as Hagrah opened the heavy and resilient hatch by holding up the dead soldier's hand to the activation scanner before dropping the headless corpse to the floor along with his shotgun which he replaced with a pistol.

Sutili's regal expression was shattered by a look of abject terror as she backed across the room.

He grasped her by her thin neck and pulled her towards him with the pistol kept to her head.

Moments later a full squad of salarians were standing at the threshold of the door with their weapons raised and ready to fire though they paused, unwilling to kill their pay check.

This had been Hagrah's plan all would almost certainly have security measures in place to prevent him getting a message to the surface and he would never escape without transport. Equally he knew Sutili's master's would not trade her life for his freedom. He could however force them to kill him and take the contemptible bitch with him thus halting their plans before they could progress further.

"P-please let me go." Sutili pleaded desperately as she felt the hard ring of the gun barrel pressed against her temple and his arm wrapped around her neck hard enough to prevent her taking full breaths.

"No." Hagrah responded simply, he had no intent of displaying his intentions to the woman.

"You'll kill us both." She argued correctly.

"True but I figure you'll be blown apart before me, so I win." He responded with a deadly seriousness behind his blasé tone.

"I don't think you will." Lord-General Damalik said as his hologram reappeared, content that Hagrah knew of his involvement and that the mercenaries believed enough in the cause to keep quiet.

"Oh, I'm sure seeing her chest explode first will soften the blows." Hagrah responded without looking to face the significantly enlarged hologram.

"The knowledge of your family dead will surely sting more though." Damalik countered.

There was pause again, he thought his family was safe after he got them out of the hegemony and supposedly beyond Damalik's considerable reach.

A guard forced them in range of Damalik's holo-receiver.

"Erton?" His, admittedly estranged wife asked as she saw him with his arm wrapped around the gossamer salarian.

"Father." The small boy next to her said as he saw his father's day job for the first time.

"Banik, Tesul!" He responded with wide-eyed surprise as he saw them with the tip of a batarian assault riffle next to each of their heads.

"Put down your weapon and release her or they die." Damalik threatened as he raised his hand, a single to prepare to fire.

Hagrah thought, his own fate was sealed but his family had no worthwhile information and could be easily transferred out of the hegemony once their plan was fulfilled.

He released her.

A concussive round knocked him spluttering to the floor and as he was dragged out of the room he could hear gunfire and flanged screaming.

As he was taken back to his cell and restrained, this time with guards posted, for the first time during the torture tears streamed from all four of his beady black eyes. Once again the weakest link of his various counter-torture mechanisms was himself. Damalik was right, he didn't have the stomach for wet work.


	9. Chapter 9: On the Hunt

In the week of travel Gadon and Addison had been held busy getting to know the crew with emphasis on the life saving Doctor Moran, a small and pleasant woman despite the battle armour that rested beneath her lab coat, a strangely ubiquitous feature of scientific apparel regardless of species.

"This is Captain Parikh, Kav tells me that we are at a half hour to landing at the Point Nautilus Space-Porte, please go to the rear loading bay." The speaker system reported.

"Thank you Captain." Gadon responded over his communications implant as Addison and he moved to the rear compartment, designed to hold the Hazardous Terrain Transport and comfortably held Gadon and Addison's aero shuttle. They retrieved their weaponry and made their last checks as they awaited for the ship to land though they decided to leave their locusts in storage, judging that the wealthy figure inhabiting the island wouldn't take so well to such obvious arms and chose instead to carry only their pistols, concealed in holsters beneath their coats.

The large ramp finally opened and let in the humid, storm wracked air of trident.

Gadon almost immediately began a coughing fit as he was nearly hit in the face by a veritable rule of humid air similar to that of Kahje. It was a sensation his father had only described to him before, of nearly drowning on thick air as he felt it filling his throat and lungs as he struggled deeply to breathe.

"Are you okay!" Addison shouted somewhat in concern though partially to be heard over the noise of the sea smashing against the dock which served as a landing for ships both stellar and oceanic. The sky was hooded in deep gray clouds that occluded the sky and was lit with the occasional crackle of lightning and windswept rain cut across the sparse streets.

"Fine, the air is a bit wet that's all." Gadon responded with a few more trailing coughs though he was obviously still uncomfortable.

The travel brochures from the Trident Travel Administration depicted long white beaches, lush flora both native and foreign and pleasant seaside villages catering primarily to the wealthy.

That was indeed the case at the southern islands. At the moment however storms were wracking the equatorial district which included Point Nautilus, or the Capital Island. The island housed Trident Colonial Authority along with the local head quarters of a number of corporations which informally controlled it all of them low squat buildings designed to anchor well against tornado strength winds and worked deep into the ground of the archipelago they sat in like massive stakes drove into the hide of some leviathan. Not that even Trident marine life could grow that big.

"I say we talk to the Colonial Authority, they should have information on any travellers."

"Assuming they came here legally." Addison responded as rain whipped at their exposed faces.

"Only a politician would have the connections to get Spectres involved, that means that wherever they're going it's going to be noticed, they'll need an Alibi to be coming here so they'll do it officially." Gadon explained in his slightly choked voice as he struggled with the heavy air.

They made their way down the streets, which judging by the private shuttles and expensive security measures around their well made forms were entirely consistent with the wealth expected of the mineral rich world.

They finally reached the doors of the Authority's central offices with rain water and far flung ocean spray streaming off of their coats, both of which were fortunately covered with a small layering of water repellent synthetic materials. They waited a moment and headed through the offices and their supposedly state of the art weapons detectors, foiled by the unique construction of their weapons for undercover operations.

"Hello." A human woman with the name Suri Tannaka said as they stepped through the door, leaving little droplets from their coat tail to fall through the grates, designed to recycle the water through various systems. At that time a number of hot air jets blasted the remaining moisture from them in a loud flurry that split the silence in the nearly empty foyer.

"Hello is there anyone we can talk to about recent arrivals." Gadon asked to the tall slender woman. She was beautiful in an artificial way, her makeup was heavy and her teeth artificially whitened.

"May I ask why you're looking?" She asked with a polite smile that was obviously a part of her job description.

"We have reason to believe that a mercenary operation is using one of your underwater bases." Gadon explained, an accurate assumption though he was keen to leave Spectres out of it. To the criminal minded people of Omega that meant someone powerful and dangerous. In the more organised atmosphere of Trident it was a powerless outsider with no jurisdiction.

There was an obvious difference between both the Citadel and Omega's security forces leaving it to lay somewhere in between. The guards were armed and were obviously military types much like the Omega thugs yet someone had gone to the trouble of taming them and sticking them in a company issued suit branded with Trident Colonial Police logo. Their cold eyes monitored him like tracking cameras or vultures circling pray as they spoke.

"A shaven headed, dark skinned man in with "Warwick Singh" written on his name walked over brusquely. Beneath his well cut suit Gadon's keen eye could still make out the slight outline of a shield harness and the man's impressive musculature. He scowled behind his opaque sunglasses as he eyed the two and like any good soldier for hire weighed his chances against them.

"We're with Stannard Bail and Bonds." Was all Gadon had to say in elaboration. During his time on the New Albion colonies he had indeed signed on with the inter stellar bounty hunting corporation to give him more legal clout.

"Very well, I can escort you to the traffic and habitation records." Warwick said in a deep, harsh voice.

"Captain Singh, this is highly unusual." Suri protested though she did not waver from her calm, pleasant tone.

"Stannard bail and bonds has paid the fees of it's jurisdiction contract, we must co-operate."

They walked along the nearly empty corridors, abandoned due to the heavy rain and the comparative ease of online endeavours. It was only deeper in the bowels of the large building, where the sound of rain against the walls no longer audible that Warwick began to speak.

"Good to see you again Gad." Warwick said politely and quietly in his cheerful accent which the people of New Albion told him was Indian, once away from prying ears. How the state of Indiana could sound so different from the rest of the American Union he didn't know.

"You as well Warwick." Gadon responded in kind. A look of surprise was all Addison could add to the conversation.

"Detective Addison Sandoval I'd like to introduce you to meet Warwick Singh, my deputy from the Traverse." Gadon elaborated with a note of respect. In her week with the police-lizard she had seen him amused, confused and even polite albeit grudgingly. Respect however was one thing she had thought him too proud to display as though it were missing from his emotional repertoire.

"Pleased to meet you, it's rare someone gets a smile out of him." she responded with an enthusiastic handshake.

"Well Detectives what brings you so far from the Citadel?" Warwick asked in his cheerful way which triggered memories in both Gadon and Addison.

"Spectre business if you can believe it." Gadon answered coolly.

In the middle of the long, obsidian tilled empty corridor, Warwick turned around in surprise. He quickly looked around the corridor for anyone listening and found no one among the granite walls. There was a look of surprise on his tanned face that looked as though it might break into a nervous smile.

"A Spectre, they made you a Spectre?" Warwick asked with shock in his voice that he was keen to avoid echoing. "And they sent you to the Terminus systems, if some people found out you could start a war."

"Yes, so you can imagine it's rather important, all I can say is we could have a Saren situation on our hands." Gadon responded with a similar urgency. Despite a number of undercover operations and the odd counter-intelligence case such cloak-and-dagger activities as espionage always unnerved him.

"Fine, I'll get you the files, follow me." Warwick responded uncomfortably as they reached the hatch leading to the travel offices. As it retracted he saw the cold blue light of a dozen displays and the thin, pallid technician that oversaw it.

"Who are these people." A technician questioned harshly as he stepped from his chair.

"Calm down, Gavin they're with Stannard Bail and Bonds, they're looking into a merc base." Warwick answered.

"We'll just need to look at your travel records." Gadon explained as he walked towards the screens and accessed it via his Omni-tool.

Gavin moved his control panel in wordless compliance, preferring not to talk to such types whom he often found too brutish and slow-witted for his liking, that and the tall woman next to the lizard left him a tad…. preoccupied

Gadon loomed over the rail thin young man, close enough that the strangely pleasing smell of the drell's psychotropic compounds as he tapped diligently at the control panel.

"What are you doing?" Addison questioned as she leaned over Gavin's other shoulder, allowing the sweet smell of her perfume to wash over him. The brusque alien on one shoulder and the pleasant woman on the other reminded him somewhat of the ancient images of psychomchia he had seen in old earth galleries.

"I'm using the root prefixes for Salarian civilian vessels by dynasty, to rule out the majority of traffic as he scanned over the text with his busy fingers typing. He found the one he was looking for "Rannadril Ghan Swa Fulsoom Karaten Narr" Next to the name of the ship, a strong patriotic name for the salarians, Farreot one of the many salarian words for 'progress' or 'advancement.' It had docked at the Chariot's Landing space-to-ocean docks near the northern remote pole. It was a fairly old ship with a chequered history, having served as the private vessel Administrator Anoleis, one of the most notorious white collar criminals in recent history.

Searching the dock he found that it had aquatic tubes running to but three possible underwater stations. Cousteau point, one of the foremost universities of applied marine biology and far too public to use. Station Delta Zero, an iridium mining platform that was too strictly secured by the Trident Colonial Authority and lastly Hullside estates, a presently uninhabited ocean research station that was closed off after the small Salarian company funding it mysteriously went under. Exactly what he was looking for. According to it's profile it had been purchased by a rival mega company known as Narr Enterprise Dynamics to perform a study on the effects of prolonged seclusion with an alien culture. Namely batarian culture.

Having memorised the co-ordinates he wiped the search from records and set it back to the display he had seen it at before his meddling.

"Thank you Warwick, you might well have stopped a war with this." Gadon said enthusiastically as they walked out of the small room.

"I'm sure, just consider that debt completed." Warwick responded dryly.

"Debt?" Addison interjected.

"There was a little mix up with a turian freighter captain and a cross-dressing…"

"That's quite enough." Warwick interrupted. Addison merely smiled at the flustered man as they parted ways.

They made their way through the twist of long corridors and through to the nearly vacant foyer, with Suri watching them keenly as they passed out of the building and into the storm.

The storm pounded them again as they called their aero shuttle and waited for it's bright red form to appear from out of the haze of the storm. It's nimble form darted through the gale force winds easily and parked itself squarely in front of them. The tinted windows of the doors retracted and permitted them entry.

As they ascended Gadon was thankful for the climate controlled interior of the shuttle. In time his laboured breathing softened and dissipated as they flew across the planet. It was at this time also that he was glad to have paid for a shuttle engine that could do mach three in a pinch, which cut their travel time considerably.

"So, what was Warwick like as a deputy?" Addison asked as he settled into a comfortable slouch.

"Alright, a good kid- man rather." Gadon corrected "he hated it when I called him that, even when he visited on the station." He half muttered.

"A woman wheels near to us. "Don't dance either?" she asked." Gadon reported in a detached manner. His inner eyelids were pulled back to reveal the crocodile-like slits of his pupils. The corners of his lips were in an ethereal smile almost unbefitting of his regular demeanour.

He flicked the thick black membranes to a close and took on an expression of pure embarrassment under his blue scaled face. "Sorry about that." Gadon stated sheepishly.

"Was that a Solipsism?" Addison asked simply, having come across references to the strange reflex during her poring over the codex. Over their time with the _Illuminator's _crew she had seen it once or twice though Gadon seemed to refrain from the process.

"Yeah sorry, Addison, normally I don't have to deal with those." Gadon apologised again, evidently rather disturbed as he rubbed the plated scales of his forehead.

"I thought all drell had solipsism-episodes?" She asked. As they neared the poles. The lapping sea gave way to drifting giants of icebergs and snow streaked around the large windshield.

"Yes but it varies as to how many, some can barely live their lives for them and others barely have them, it all depends on how emotionally stable they are." He explained as he looked more intently at the holographic sensor, the whipping snow flurries having rendered visual piloting unfeasible. His finger taps became more forceful as the emotion bit away at him.

The flashbacks always did irk him. More than once a poorly timed solipsism had interrupted a conversation and made him look a fool. More than that more often than not whenever he had such flashbacks the emotions, for better or worse flooded back, leading to the occasional appearance of a mood swing if not well controlled.

The remaining flight to Chariot's Landing was quick and quiet as Gadon gently slowed the craft to a gentle pace and bought it to hover over the surface of the chill waters. With the flick of a few hard-light buttons they fell into the icy water and began to sink due to the assisstance of the craft's mass effect core. Small turbines slowly moved the craft downwards and forwards towards Hullside estates according to memorised coordinates. The small sonar screen displayed the fuzzy form of massive creatures which fed off of tiny fish and plankton in the dark deep ocean. Though the codex made no mention of attacks on vehicles in the area the primeval fear of the circling creatures was still present.

"Why does this even have an underwater mode, it never left the Citadel." Addison asked as she stared out into the sunless black of the nameless ocean, their progress marked only by faint specs within the bright lights.

"It pays to be prepared." Was all Gadon had to say on the matter as he slipped out of his coat to reveal his full armament including a number of grenades, flash bangs, handcuffs and a collapsible shock baton. Hullside was approaching.

In the murky light of the aero shuttle's spotlight the long band like form of Hullside became apparent. As did the abyss it loomed over. It was a metallic windowless base which Addison thought reminded her rather of an old underwater base she had seen in an old spy film some years ago as part of Edinburgh University's cultural history week.

Circling around one end of the base they came across a small access bay under the bottom of the base which was lit by a small light around the periphery.

Gadon connected the shuttle computer to his Omni-tool and quickly broke through the dated locking software on the hatch which retracted quickly.

"Ready?" Gadon asked as he picked up his Locust from a compartment in the cockpit.

Doing the same Addison steeled herself for battle and looked him straight in his black eyes. "Ready."

They jumped out weapons drawn and were immediately met by a half dozen heavily armed and armoured salarian mercenaries. All of the myriads weapons pointed at them and ready to fire.


	10. Chapter 10: Into the Light

Gadon quickly scrabbled across the docking bay floor, followed direly by a concentrated spray of fire as he ducked behind the cover of a large crate. Addison had been content to use a biotic charge to shoot towards a large oxygen recycler for her own protection.

Gadon keyed up his Omni-tool and released a small orange Omni-drone which quickly buzzed out from behind the cover and drew their fire. As the shots tore through it Gadon popped up again and released a heavy overload which dropped the shields of a few mercenaries.

Sensing her moment via her helmet's sensors Addison jumped up and pulled them quickly into the ceiling and then let them drop heavily towards the hard deck plates. As they were in freefall Gadon sprayed at them with his Locust and leaving their flailing forms to drop like rag dolls to the floor.

The four remaining mercenaries opened fire, pinning them behind their cover and leaving deep divots in the deck plates around them.

Addison peeked out of cover for a moment and saw her chance. She flung them against back wall they were in front of hard enough to break bone though three of them were able to get up.

Before they could react a spray of gunfire from both them cut them down swiftly.

"Move up." Gadon commanded as he hopped over the hydraulic systems and sprinted his way up the door, popping his heat-sink on the way.

"We have intruders in the base!" Sutili exclaimed from her control room deep within the submerged complex. On the display screens IFF dots were going out rapidly, Kek, Notos, Ferrin and Bort were already dead. "Get me a camera lock on the enemy." She commanded to the lowly tech hand beneath her platform overlooking the other consoles.

An image of a man and a woman doing combat came up on the large display in front of them.

"Two people, those men are ex-STG." She exclaimed to the taller man next to her.

"Yes Dalatress, but that one" He explained as he pointed to the man in the stylish clothing. "Is a Spectre."

The entire command staff looked up at him with nervous eyes as he studied the screen calmly.

"Well then, get out there Joralan." Sutili commanded as she spun around on the balls of her dog like feet only to find he had already started walking away.

"That's why I came here." Joralan responded without breaking step. It was true, Tethena and Korian were otherwise occupied and his engineering and intelligence training made him an ideal choice in bypassing Hagrah's cybernetics.

There were another three guards in the corridor that attempted to open fire. A burst of rapidly produced plasma from Gadon's Omni-tool burnt away the armour of two of them as they flailed in agony at the searing flames which ablated armour, boiled suit fluids and scorched skin. The third was no more lucky, a powerful burst of biotic warp-energy created a twisting conflagration of rapidly shifting gravity fields which shredded a large part of the now deceased man's torso.

Their luck changed however when an overload burst caught Gadon by surprise. He fell over, his shields depleted and his cybernetic leg flailing wildly around.

Before Addison could clear the hatch it slammed shut, inches from taking her nose off. On the other side hatches sealed off the corridors, obviously a technique to help contain hull breaches by sectioning off flooded areas.

Un deterred Addison stepped back and slammed into it with a biotic charge, only to be rebuffed with barely a scratch.

"Don't bother human, that hatch can hold back an ocean." A snide salarian voice projected over the speakers.

Looming over him was a salarian clad in gear beyond even the resources of the mercenaries so far encountered. His armour was light and modern, in with the standard of salarian design. His deep grey, curved, nose-less face was obscured slightly by a holographic visor which obscured his deep black eyes. Over the black and white armour of his right pectoral muscle the logo of a spectre was apparent.

"You honestly think you're a real Spectre don't you?" Joralan asked bitterly as he walked over with his distinctive HMWP pistol in hand prepared to finish him off.

"You honestly think that badge makes you one of us, you pathetic little hojkar." Joralan spat the un-translated slur at him.

Rapidly rebooting his leg Gadon lunged at him, knocking the Spectre issue pistol from the smaller man's hands and pushing him into a wall and then onto the ground. Lithe though powerful legs, strengthened by a myriad of genetic modifications kicked Gadon clear off of him. The force of it knocked the gun from Gadon's hands. He drew his carnifex and prepared to fire only to find that it was ineffective.

There was a smug smile on Joralan's face as he generated an advanced field of tech armour around his body.

Gadon activated his Omni-blades and went to dig them into the armour only to have the prefab blade snap away into shards and splinters.

Joralan threw him across the room with his bare hands and sent him thumping into the deck plates whilst the weapon scraped along the floor.

Laying on the deck plates Gadon unleashed another plasma bolt which caused the tech armour to fail catastrophically, releasing a pulse of energy that left faint dents in the wall next to him but left Joralan otherwise unharmed.

In response Joralan released a cryo-burst that Gadon dodged just in time to avoid having his face frozen to the deck plates. He rolled into a crouch and stood up quickly, directing his momentum into a strong punch which busted Joralan's lip. He followed it with a swift left cross.

A spinning kick from Joralan knocked Gadon side ways and cracked his visor. He went to follow with a short swift uppercut that Gadon blocked and countered with a hard knee to Joralan's waif like chest which cracked bone. Another punch was levied.

Seemingly unfazed Joralan grasped his wrist mid punch and gripped it hard enough to hurt through the layers of his of his tough skin and firm muscle. He held him there before slamming Gadon into the dented wall hard enough to dent it somewhat more, nearly cracking Gadon's skull and would have shattered it if not for the C-Sec bone strengthening modifications issued to him. Gadon flung Joralan's lighter body off of him with a grunt of exertion.

Landing almost gracefully on his small, digitrade feet Joralan retorted with a rapid flurry of jabs and crosses that Gadon blocked, deflected or dodged and attempted to counter though Joralan was similarly skilled. Too similarly in fact, his fighting style was exactly the same as C-Sec's unarmed combat advanced training.

Instead he would have to fight much more dirtily. He grabbed Joralan by the horn and smashed him into a wall repeatedly, damaging his holo-visor's projectors and causing it to flicker messily. His jaw was cracked and teeth dislodged though his consciousness remained.

On the third attempt to do so Joralan twisted and caught him in a throw, utilising Gadon's weight and momentum to throw him clear over his head and smack him harshly to the ground.

A boot came down and was held mere inches from crushing in Gadon's windpipe before he twisted the ankle and threw Joralan off of balance. Seizing the moment he scrabbled to his feet and delivered a high kick which caught him in the ribs.

Leaping backwards Joralan fired a burst of plasma which Gadon dodged as much through luck as through speed though it's passing heat still left a prickly agony across his body as it passed. It smashed into the bulkhead and melted away a significant depth of it to glowing slag.

Now with the room to think Gadon quickly keyed up a highly dangerous, highly questionable program on his Omni-tool, issued to people who might need to perform a non lethal take-down. Such as C-Sec. As Joralan charged at him a neural shock caused him to tumble limply like a rag doll to the floor. Howling in pain all the while.

"You are under arrest, under Council authority your Spectre status is revoked. Anything you say will be used in evidence against you." Gadon said as he held his, active Omni tool over the man with incinerate keyed up and ready to go.

"Still…ngh" Joralan grunted in pain as his synapses sizzled. "clinging to your policeman…ngh principles I see." There was grim realisation on his face as he realised what would become of him. Without his Spectre licence he was just another loose end to Damalik. More than that he was just another small, short-lived little man in a big uncaring galaxy.

"Finish it." Joralan asked as he rolled limply to look Gadon in his black eyes.

"No, you will face due process and due punishment, nothing more, nothing less." Gadon said as he retrieved a pair of restraint bands from his utility belt.

"The hell I will!" Joralan said as he leapt clumsily off the ground. It was done in a second. Gadon opened fire and caught Joralan in the mouth, leaving a large messy gap in the back of his head and shattering his lower jaw into a plasma cauterised mess.

Breathing deeply Gadon pulled off his helmet

Gadon bought up his Omni-tool again and opened a small sensor node in the middle of a corridor wall and quickly managed to disengage the deadbolts holding the hatches closed.

As he released it a quartet of other mercenaries were stood behind the opposite blast door.

Before they could open fire he froze one stiff with a cryo blast. Captalising on his companion's shocked expressions he took a good run to build up momentum and then kicked him to shattered pieces.

A nearby mercenary went to attack him with the butt of his riffle and found he had an Omni-Blade where his heart should had been.

The latter two, obviously the more intelligent ones backed up.

A shotgun blast hit him square in the chest, very nearly dropping his shields and forcing him to back away behind the cover of a rib-like supporting wall brace at the sides of the corridor.

It was at that moment that a spray of submachine gun fire cut them to ribbons.

"Where would you be without me Gadon?" Addison said with a small grin.

"A grave quite likely." Gadon responded as he picked up his carnifex and Joralan's now unused pistol and slotted it into the appropriate mag-holster whilst he left his tempest out and ready to fire.

Inching their way around the corridor they came upon a locked door, with the faintest specks of green blood visible on the floor next to it.

"We're here I think." Gadon said as he hacked their way past the lock.

Behind a barrier and held entirely still off the ground in a complex series of pneumatic arms was a bare-chested batarian man who had obviously not been well cared for. Large blisters, burns, and bruises ran across his bare chest and one of his four eyes were swollen shut.

The room was dark and plain.

"Has Sutili finally started armouring my tormentor's, guess she's learning." He commented in a croaking and parched voice.

"We aren't working for…whoever Sutili is." Gadon said as he approached the console near to his shackles.

"Are you Hagrah?" Addison asked as Gadon typed away at the controls to have the restraints release him.

"Yes." He replied simply.

The barrier deactivated and the arms allowed him to drop.

Landing on his feet he stood, shakily for a moment.

"Take this we're getting you out of here." He said as he passed him Joralan's gun.

"I see you killed the Spectre. Impressive." He said as he checked the weapon and found that it was perfectly operational. Quite a sign of trust.

"Halt y-" A salarian mercenary went to say before Hagrah turned simply and shot him three times, rapidly.

"You have no idea how much I've wanted to do that." Hagrah expressed as he released a contented moan and made for the exit.

They ran out into the corridor and were greeted by five guards. Before they could open fire on the unshielded Hagrah a biotic barrier popped up between them courtesy of Addison.

"Fall back to the shuttle!" Gadon commanded as he sprayed phase jacketed-hypersonic metal at them. Two of them fell over dead almost instantly.

He released an AI drone and followed it up with an overload which dropped the shields of another one. His eyes went wide as Gadon, Addison and Hagrah fired on him, cutting him down instantly.

They backed away quickly with Gadon half twisting backwards to provide covering fire which dropped one man whilst three more joined them.

As they ran down the corridors and relied on their relative speed and the tight twists of the base to provide the number of people behind them grew and grew. Gadon realised that all it would take was a solid force between them and the exit to pin them down long enough to engage in combat and they would be swiftly routed. As they passed Gadon dropped small AI drones to serve as a distraction.

A single mercenary popped out of the corridor and before he could fire Addison merely flung him backwards with a swipe of biotic energy.

They ran down the long straights for the bulkhead leading to the shuttle bay and scrabbled behind it's thick doors in time to avoid a hail of bullets.

After fusing the locking circuits shut Gadon ran back to the waiting aero shuttle with Addison in one side and Hagrah wedged into the cramped middle seat.

They rapidly sped away and upwards for the surface whilst the bomb ticked away rapidly.

Within her command room Sutili flicked the camera over to the shuttle bay. It was completely empty, the intruders were gone. The tracking screen for Hagrah's locator implant showed him gradually moving away from them.

"I see you've lost a grip of him." Dalatress Asdrii said as her wrinkled and grey form appeared on the screen, she was sat like a crumpled doll her luxurious chair with her cane leaning against the arm of it.

"Was Joralan at least able to get the information out of him?" Damalik asked as he took up the call and appeared on screen. The combined cost of transmitting a live video call from both Sur'Kesh and Kar'Shan was probably already in the hundreds of credits, a pointlessly small amount to such wealthy beings. Over the endeavour that had become apparent, Each of the four-now two mercenary Spectres was due a ten million credit payment for undertaking the task, not including funding their expenses of housing, transport and equipment. There was another forty men on the base, each promised between a hundred thousand and a million credits for their time and then the base itself had to be bought out for very nearly a billion, whatever else they hadn't told her about she could only guess but it was running quite high.

"No." She gulped deeply and bowed her head. "He's dead." She looked up and watched as both of them narrowed their eyes in annoyance, Damalik more so.

"Then you and your men are an unaffordable compromise of security." Asdrii commented as she pressed a few small switches in the arms of the chair which cut the connection and set of warning alarms.

"Self destruct imminent. Self destruct imminent" An emotionless VI's voice reported as klaxons flared. Sutili realised now that keeping the self-piloting shuttle on the surface was not a security precaution but a method of containment.

"Sergeant Kobold, get your men to engineering we have a reactor meltdown." Sutili commanded to the nearest squad as she began the process of sealing off the command centre and dropping the various bulkheads between them and the control centres, sealing the remaining personnel wherever they were.

Heedlessly they began attempting to unlock the hatch blocking access to the main reactor. They started calmly and professionally at first though quickly it grew to frantic attempts to open the near impervious hatch.

"Sutili, we can't unseal the shuttle hatch, please unlock the doors." The sergeant begged. His eyes were wide and his sharp voice trembled with fear.

"No." Sutili said simply as she cut the audio channel. She still watched the video feeds, awaiting the explosion. She also watched the sergent and his men. Kobold and Engineer Smeet continued trying to open the hatch whilst many of his men lay about the floor, resigned to their fate. A scarce few smashed their hands against the opposing bulkhead, bending back their nails and beating their hands to blood green pulps.

There was a flash of light and the entire room was gone, replaced instead by the swirling sea and small floating chunks of what had been thinking feeling beings, reduced now to small shreds of inanimate flesh. In that one blast near the lower left end of the half of the base had been consumed and it's perch over the cliff destabilised.

Weakened by the heat and the force of the explosion bulkhead after bulkhead crushed and crumpled in. Those caught in the imploded sections were crushed by the crumpling metal or died near instantly from the shocking cold and fatal pressure. The icy water seeped through seems of the other compartments flooding them and their inhabitants who banged futilely against the cold walls. The command room held though.

"Sub-Dalatress, the room is secure but we've lost nearly all of our personnel." A batarian tech hand reported from his perch over the console.

"Sub-Dalatress!" A salarian man exclaimed as he looked at a number of flashing warnings filled his screen. "The struts are weakening and we're tilting." He responded as slowly the room seemed to tip to one side. Mugs of tea and coffee slid over and stray data pads fell everywhere as they attempted to hold onto their consoles.

The last of the support struts gave out, and the craft slipped off the edge of the shallow shelf. It's shredded form began to sink deeper into the dark ocean.

"Ma'am, atmospheric pressure is increasing!" the salarian reported as the sonar screens displayed their rapidly sinking position.

"Do something!" Sutili half ordered half begged as she clung into the side of her chair as the floor tilted sharply.

"We-we can't." The Batarian said in a startled voice, too shocked to fully accept his imminent mortality. There was a thumping on the door, evidently a few surviving base technicians. They pleaded desperately across a number of languages, batarian, salarian even a single turian voice joined the crescendo of fear. In time the pressure crumpled in the bulkheads around the resilient command centre. Their thumping ceased with a primal screen and the slam of water against the bulkhead.

All of the remaining walls creaked and groaned ominously as the pressure mounted on them. The three technicians looked at the slowly creasing ceiling grew more and more denatured.

"Oh." Was all Sutili could utter before the ceiling finally gave in and the crushing water rushed inwards and smothered away the fearful sparks of their lives.


	11. Chapter 11: Liberation

"This is Gadon to the Illuminator, we rescued Hagrah meet me at these coordinates." He said glumly as he relayed the information. .

"Rodger." Captain Parikh responded as she ordered her ship into the air.

"I noticed the belt by the way." Hagrah stated as he tightened his grip of Joralan's pistol. "Gadon." He added flatly as he acquainted himself with the name. He had met drell beforehand, a strong and spiritual people from his experience though not to his knowledge Spectres.

"Yes, I'm a Spectre hello by the way Hagrah." Gadon responded calmly.

"How do you know my name?" The batarian asked in most walks of life such a question might be a sign of paranoia. In the Hegemony Ministry of Intelligence it was a survival mechanism.

"I got it off of T'Laas' hard suit when I killed her." Gadon responded simply as he flew his way across the free and empty sky.

"I suppose, that makes sense." Hagrah said as he sat back.

"Do you have the encryption key for Nyatta T'Quinn's OSD?" Addison asked.

"Yes I have the information but I'll need a med-bay to get to it." Hagrah said with a resigned look, for months now that singular amount of information had been the sole motivation…and torment of his life with an enormous trail of blood credits and ordinance to run behind him.

"I suspect that's one of those paranoid spy-things." Addison commented as she pulled out a flask of water took a small drink of it and then passed it to Hagrah. He guzzled it quickly, despite the veritable ocean around his prison he had been given only the slightest amount of water to survive and not a drop more to keep him weak and demoralised. Addison wasn't sure if that was a sign of trust or merely thirst in his part but either way it reminded her slightly of a dog the Sandovals had once had.

"Paranoia is an **un**reasonable suspicion Addie." Gadon advised as he adjusted their heading with unerring precision.

In between the pole and the equator the _Illuminator _finally came into view over the lapping ocean. The ship twisted quickly about to grant access to the landing bay which projected smoothly from the ship's underbelly. With a practiced precision Gadon nimbly parked the craft inside.

They stepped out onto the cold deck as the hatch resealed and the biting wind of the upper atmosphere receded. They clambered out of the shuttle with deep sighs of relief. It ceased however when they noticed the _Illuminator's _four security officers Hod, Theon, Ossat, and Jatar each equipped with the M-88 Vixen, an updated Armageddon shotgun modified and hardened for Compact use and fitted with razor sharp bayonets for close quarters combat and loaded with disruptor ammo. 

"Sorry sir, Compact policy, no foreign combatants are allowed on the ship without security escort." Jatar explained.

"Addison's a foreign combatant, you don't watch her." Gadon observed, not moving away from Hagrah. If there was to be any trust in the man they would do well not treat him as a prisoner. Despite that, however from what details Gadon could remember he was apparently a part of the Hegemony's intelligence divisions and as such a trained spy. The political and technical information stored aboard a Compact vessel would prove quite valuable.

"She was issued special clearance by C-Sec, he was not." Jatar responded instantly.

"Be that as it may this is a Council-Aligned ship and as a Spectre I say he can go where he wants." Gadon responded as he walked straight towards the guards and they parted to allow him and his newly expanded entourage past with a flutter of his coat.

"You certainly run a tight ship." Hagrah observed as he followed after them.

"He doesn't." Captain Parikh said as she confronted them. The fact that Gadon stopped in the presence of a single woman where was prepared to barge past four armed men suggested to Hagrah that this was a woman of note.

"Gadon, this is my ship and I don't like having batarian agents, renegade or otherwise running around my ship." She announced in a loud projecting voice.

"He has been through enough without us doubting him at every turn." Gadon defended with an unflappable calm. "Besides he's got the information we need." he added.

"Look do whatever you want with him, so long he doesn't endanger this ship or it's crew."

"I wi-"

"Because if he does, Spectre or not I'm flushing you both into space." She added menacingly before she walked away.

"Ah military banter, how I've missed it." Hagrah observed dryly.

Within the medical bay Hagrah was sat on an operating table with his anesthetised arm being cut into by Doctor Moran as he directed her with a bored look on his face. The room itself was bleach white and made up of bright, cold colours and it's wall was lined with a quartet of beds with medical operating arms hanging over them.

"Doctor I need you to take a small OSD out of my arm please." He said without announcement as he walked in and sat down heavily on the medical bed.

"Gadon is this a friend of yours." Doctor Moran asked as she observed the large batarian, battered looking sat there.

"Yes and I'm sure he has a good reason for the request." Gadon said diplomatically as he entered the room with the clack of hard shoes a moment later.

"Fine jest let me get my prep gear." She responded with a flustered huff. She had three lab cultures to analyze, a battery of vaccines to synthesise and administer and a dental appointment with Engineer Kol to see to and minor surgery for the fate of the galaxy was likely to throw off her busy schedule.

"I had the one-time-pad's cipher key for the OSD's file hidden in my arm, should be easy enough to get to." He explained from behind an operating mask as the doctor worked.

"Thorough." Addison observed dryly as she tried not to look at his incredibly naked arm.

With a slight tug the small, encased OSD came loose, coated in red blood.

"There you go." the doctor said as she cleaned it up in a nearby sonic steriliser and then handed it to Gadon. she added.

"Do you mind if we watch it here Doctor I can't wait for Hagrah to make a full recovery." Gadon said as he continued the disk to a computer terminal resting on a portable operating table and did the same with Nyatta's disk.

"Of course, I'll just get out of your way." Doctor Moran said as she walked out of the small, sterile med bay to stand around outside.

Hagrah quickly typed in the twenty one letter and number access code to release the one-time-pad's cipher key program which rapidly transmitted itself. With a series of beeps the files unlocked with their data ready to be revealed.

Opening the first file Hagrah explained the complex series of shipping manifests and personnel files which the translator began rendering into trade-tongue, the only language they could all read comfortably.

"What is this?" Gadon asked as he looked at a number of human profiles with Batarian names attached to them.

"They're the Janissary project." Hagrah said as he took a deep breath and began explaining. "My superior, Lord-General Damalik has been working with a salarian official to undermine humanity's seat on the Council and win the Hegemony a seat in it's place."

"How, the salarians and turians would never go for it." Gadon criticised as he continued looking at the profiles. Few of them were over forty, the result of slave grabs on a number of human worlds.

"Exactly, the idea is that the hegemony is going to use these people to stage a false-flag Alliance attack all over the turian/salarian world of Votum in the traverse." Gadon and Addison remembered the name, the Alliance laid claim to the world just after Shanxi and were denied it after a heavy, turian led political campaign.

"When the 'Alliance' attacks the Fleet at the nearby hegemony world Jormune will arrive there before the Council can send assistance and rescue the planet from what is supposed to be a massive biological attack that leaves humans unharmed." Hagrah explained.

"When the Citadel hears news of this illegal weapon and the massive loss of life it will incur they'll immediately eject the humans from the Citadel all together." Hagrah finished calmly.

"I'll give them, it **is** clever." Gadon responded. "Omega was hit by a similar plague which allowed human gangs to advance, the reason for the outbreak was never pinned down but together with this attack the Terminus Systems might see it as the prelude to an alliance invasion and start attacking the human colonies there and then the Alliance proper, weakening it for a Council supported batarian invasion." Gadon hypothesised.

"General Damalik thinks so." Hagrah said with worry in his voice that he might be right.

"Have you ever considered going into politics, you seem quite good at the whole plotting thing." Addison commented as she watched the glimmer in his eye when he realised the plot before him.

"I quite like having a sense of ethics thank you." Gadon responded with a small, nervous smile.

"How long do we have, Hagrah" Addison said as she looked over the information.

"This OSD contains the only authentic copies of their records and the falsified declaration of war, I kept it as evidence to help the Council, they might risk attacking soon and calling it a fabrication" Hagrah responded grimly.

"Captain Parikh, take us back to the Citadel best possible speed." Gadon commanded over his commns set.

"Hagrah, we can get you to the Council, present your information there." Gadon said as he prepared went for the door to call the Doctor back in.

"Doctor, how long until Hagrah's back in good health." Addison asked as she suppressed the urge to stare at his surgically skinned arm section. Indeed much of his body was wrapped in gauze and bandages or rub on treatments to repair the damage to his body.

"I've consulted our xeno-biological database on the matter, and factoring in his own enhancements he should be fully recovered by the time we reach the mass relay." The doctor answered with a degree of intelligent confidence as she walked back into her lab.

"Excellent I'll be back to visit around noon." Gadon replied as he left.

"Dead!" Korian questioned as he observed the Lord-General's harsh, uncaring features. From his office upon the salarian yacht _Fareot One _he suffered a microsecond delay just large enough to notice. The room was large for that of a starship and decorated with the finest art from across the known species and was lit by warm lights that simulated the morning sunshine of Sur'Kesh admirably. The walls were a calming cream with floral curls and the floor was comfortably carpeted with a tough though almost silken material.

Korian had worked with the salarian for as long as they had both been Spectres and for better or worse they always got their mission done.

Joralan had been the one to involve them and Tethena and T'Laas with this endeavour via his contact, Sub-Dalatress Sutili who was herself killed in the same event. Indeed of the people involved in the undertaking only he and Tethena were alive. In his younger days that might had been cause for alarm.

"Let me guess that **drell **and his C-Sec bitch killed him?" Tethena asked aggressively, she too was fond of Joralan or at least his computer work, more than that though she was tired of this upstart getting in the way of her pay and killing her colleagues.

"Indeed." Damalik said condescendingly. "Your share of the reward goes up though, provided you survive." He added.

"We have to assume he's got the information by now, he'll probably try to tell the Council." Tethena interjected as she spun in her chair bored of the lack of explosions a yacht produced.

"Sensible." Damalik thought as he sat back into the plush padding of his chair. His dull greenish yellow face mellowed in contemplation before he spoke. "I had one of Joralan's contacts in C-Sec remove your profiles from the facial recognition hotlist and you should be able to clear customs with the passes we've counterfeited for you."

"We have the _Illuminator's _assigned berth, all we need to do is beat them there and we can kill him before he even reaches the Presidium." Tethena said with an edge of enthusiasm.

"Doubtful there are twelve Compact Spec-Ops agents on the ship, we'll need **some** measure of stealth." Korian replied to his somewhat more 'eager' associate.

"I'm never going to get use the Cain am I?" Tethena said as she looked sadly at the unwieldy hazard-yellow weapon resting against the door. It had been wrenched out of the hands of a Cerberus agent after she and T'Laas had spearheaded a crackdown on one of their bases a year ago. Ever since one associate or another's fear of 'depressurisation' or 'collateral damage' had prevented her from making use of it.

"Probably not no, the Frigate's sensors could detect the energy build-up that thing kicks out and raise shields." Korian explained.

"I don't care how you do it just make sure we cut off all the loose ends." Damalik snapped as he sat forwards angrily before cutting the channel.

Sat in the silence of the room Korian went back to looking over his Widow Anti-Materiel riffle and it's complex, highly expensive inner workings. It was, as he was prepared to admit a triumph of human design and one of the most sought after weapons available on the black market. In comparison to Joralan, T'Laas or his employers he didn't really mind the humans despite Shanxi, which he hadn't been a part of. They fought a good war and have continued to do impressive work since. Indeed his only real reason he had to take the job was the money. Lots of it.

Tethena however he was unsure of, she didn't really like the any species nor did she much care about politics after five hundred years on the job. Indeed the entire time she had cared only about being paid and getting to detonate something. _How very krogan of her _he noted mentally.

The days passed slowly as they made an approach to the nearby Pax system, content that their business within the horse-head nebula was at an end and that they were needed back on the Citadel. Within minutes of arrival within the system they were on approach to it's mass relay and within seconds of transit they were back within the Widow'system' though in truth it was merely a weak star occluded by a milky nebulae which was too distant to meaningfully affect the Citadel's orbit.

Sat in a small 'viewing room' at the bow-like tip of the yacht Korian watched via the small slit of a thickened, bullet-proof viewport protected by a kinetic barrier as the City-Among-Stars as the first turian explorers had termed it came into view from out of the thick wisps of the nebulae. It was a beautiful sight he thought as the thing seemed to reach out like a hand from the ether.

It was strange, he thought how much more beautiful the Citadel had seemed approaching it now, as a wealthy elite operative than when he first left as an ex-duct rat in the Non-Hierarchy volunteer program. Every now and again he would be on the upper level of the station and see in the distance a small broken body and feel his chest tighten in what remained of his sympathy.

At around the same time the _Illuminator's _crew were taking their hour's rest before sleep, confident that they had done their allotted engineering, filing and maintenance work for the day and being in inter stellar space they were practically undetectable to any nearby systems.

For most of the day now Hagrah had sat in what amounted to a drug induced slumber on the memory foam bedding as various intravenous and intramuscular restoratives were pumped around his body and toxins filtered free.

Within the 'guest suite' as the secondary cargo hold had been lovingly referred to by it's inhabitants Gadon was resting upon the uncomfortable tarp that passed for a mattress and attempted to relax though he continued to stare at the small chronometer on their stacked crate nightstand and the date it presented.

"Why do you keep looking at that clock?" Addison asked as she noticed his black eyes still staring in the dim light at the small device much as they had been a half hour ago.

He broke his gaze for a moment as he produced a deep flanged sigh before he spoke.

"I had scheduled the wedding for today." He said grimly. "I scheduled it for just after Agoriun's retirement, kind of a double celebration you see." He added as he looked straight up at the bare metal ceiling. "But the injury got in the way." he said as he looked at his leg resting at the foot of the bed.

"The Injury?"

"Linnea's…condition had always been a bit of a difficulty but it was my prosthetic that finally put an end to it." He said sadly and without a bite of anger, or arrogance as she had grown used to in these stories. "I spent all day and all night in physiotherapy because I couldn't stand being so…" He took in a choked sigh and Addison was sure she could see the small glint of a tear on his dark eyes. "broken, so helpless."

"Needless to say she didn't much like the implication." He said with a weak, forced grin that he wasn't sure could convince Addison he was all right with the separation. Much less himself.

In recollection there had always been difficulty. It was hard to find as many venues and the sex was awkward and as he recalled one sided not that they could really enjoy actually sleeping in the same bed lest the slight toxins in his skin absorb into her system and she spent her morning hallucinating, a necessary difficulty in her profession as a lawyer.

The short remainder of the day passed swiftly and Addison drifted off to sleep in the darkened room though Gadon had been having a certain difficulty in sleeping.

"Such regrets." he murmured softly.


	12. Chapter 12: Run the Gauntlet

The following six days were relatively uneventful. Addison had developed an appreciation for Comns Officer Janeus' recital of the drell equivalent of a saxophone. Gadon had been 'gently' pressed into taking a more active role in the ship's command structure though without an actual rank or the ability to be ordered it was little more than a method of filling time. Hagrah was sufficiently mended to walk around the ship now, not that many of the crew, besides Doctor Moran were particularly fond of the conversation as she extracted the myriad tracking devices and kill switches Sutili's men had enacted though it did at least allow him to stretch sore tendons and dull aching bones.

The _Illuminator_ however had pulled into the refuelling station in the Hecate system to top up their fuel stores and make purchase of other equipment. Hagrah however had decided to wander the station for the short time they would be there.

Fortunately the _Illuminator_ had been able to minifacture a trio of spec ops grade armour suits for he Gadon and Addison to make use of, Addison had purchased a dark and punkish set of Terminus Assault Armour specifications whilst Gadon had made use of a light, specialist's version of the Kassa Fabrications Triumph Armour System whilst Hagrah was pleased to be outfitted with a set of Kestrel Armour.

Walking around the shopping level in freshly mad combat boots he felt almost as though he were back to being a free man. Though the harsh stares that many of the apparently less wealthy spacers sat around the station's seedy few bars. The station itself was a strange combination of clean and shambolic. The station itself was well cleaned and well tended without graffiti or spills but the panelling was obviously aged and scratched by the wear of time and rough transients. A small number of pistol armed guards patrolled the station though he could tell by their body language and equipment that they were far from battle hardened professionals.

"Hagrah would you mind joining me in the conference room please." Gadon's rough, deep voice beckoned over Hagrah's newly linked communications implant.

"I'll be there as soon as possible." Hagrah said with what amounted to a small amount of cheer in his voice as he saw another batarian from the window of the station doctor's office. He was a happy looking man making what looked to be cheerful conversation with a human woman that ended in a small peck on his cheek. It was good, he thought to see his people beyond the Hegemony and as more than mere mercenaries or slavers. Moreover that he and the human could put aside their differences just for once.

He left quickly for the _Illuminator_ and was in the conference room a few moments later.

It was a fairly small room like most on the ship which was presently attempting to get through to the Council in order to lay preparations for their arrival and report in on the matter.

"What's the matter, Gadon?" He asked as he entered through the sliding hatch into the small metallic room. The drell in question was stood there in his white and black environment suit made from new and advanced ballistics mesh and integrated shield projectors for better mobility. The armour itself was designed more to allow officers and scouts to survive hostile atmospheres than hostile engagements and equipped with a small number of equipment pockets for his myriad of equipment.

"Well we were hoping to let you speak to the Council but we're having difficulty establishing a link, Comns Officer Janeus is already working on it." Gadon explained as he looked over at the shy officer, elbow deep in the internal workings of the comns-computer's hardware, having already performed a full software check.

"How long have you been trying to establish a connection?" Hagrah asked anxiously.

"About five minutes I suppose." Gadon answered. "Why?" there was a look of small surprise on his blue face, newly outfitted with a kuwashii visor to provide him constant tactical updates.

"Captain!" Hagrah said desperately as he turned to the red/blue woman across from him. "We have to get of here right now."

"What for?" Addison asked as she and the rest of the room turned and gave the growingly flustered batarian a questioning look.

The wailing of klaxons answered for him.

"Captain we have a cruiser targeting us, mercenary IFF" Kav reported as a pop up tactical display showed them leaving the station rapidly.

Sensors also reported that the ship was of elcor construction of all things though upon checking the registry details it belonged to the Blue Suns' Terminus Branch, the only place where a civilian group would be permitted such firepower and across such a large scale. Despite it's creators decidedly non-violent attitude due to the design challenges of their high gravity home-world it was an incredibly sturdy vessel with a highly powerful eezo core capable of rapidly accelerating it's large bulk or even more rapidly accelerating it's projectiles and fitted with targeting technologies that was still comparable to turian design.

The blocky, angular craft began to accelerate for the station in order to get within a reasonable proximity to the _Illuminator_. In contrast to the elegant silvery curves of the _Illuminator's _GARDIAN refractive outer layer the once grey hull of the cruiser was roughly painted in neon blue and stripes of white with large Blue Suns logos at the prow of the ship.

"This is Captain Fel Santiago" A suddenly projected human face said menacingly. His tan face was scarred with a large burn extending into his crew-cut hair. According to the profile that Gadon had already dug up from the Citadel most wanted list he was the **more** sociopath brother of Vigo Santiago, founder of the infamous group and responsible for overseeing their space-based forces "of the _MSV Regent_, surrender Knight-Colonel Hagrah to us and you will be permitted to leave." He said soldly as he sat there glaring with hard eyes.

"Captain, they will have orders to silence us all." Hagrah advised without a hint of self-interest in his voice.

"I'm not handing you over to those Spurius anyway." Parikh said as she loomed over the table and with a menacing air she stared back at him with deep black and furious eyes on her emerald green face as she looked straight at him with intensity enough to raise his eyebrow. "Parikh to ship." She said not breaking gaze. "All stations prepare for battle." she said deeply before cutting the channel.

Walking quickly back onto the bridge she began to formulate a battle plan.

"Alright everyone we have a rogue, Oltan-Type cruiser between us and the relay." Parikh said as she took her seat at her command station and focussed on the large tactical display now presented to her.

"Amonkira guide us." Kav muttered with a sacred bow as he quickly pushed the _Illuminator _away from the innocent station and then fired the four anti-proton drives that resided within the long, magnetically manipulated strip at the wide, swooping rear of the ship.

"Your crew seems oddly calm in all this." Addison commented as she stood over Parikh's shoulder.

"We've trained for this."

"Really, you have plans for fighting an elcor Cruiser alone?" She asked with doubt.

"Yes though, I think I'll be modifying the strategy since it ends with us ramming them." Parikh said calmly as she waited for the inevitable cringe as they each thought of such an end to pass.

The _Regent _immediately began it's attempts to fire off rounds though at this distance the nimble _Illuminator_ could easily evade the shots with minor course corrections. Though in such proximity to the mass relay the _Regent _could almost certainly prevent them using the mass relay a slow process which required they drop barriers to prevent being torn apart by gravitational forces. In that time the _Regent_ would almost certainly destroy them.

Dodging and weaving past the rapidly moving shots the _Illuminator _was in a vulnerable position as it accelerated quickly.

"Release a full barrage of disruptor missiles and charge the underside!" Parikh ordered with certainty as they swooped in towards the underside of the craft. A weakness of the Oltan-Type which lead to the elcor decommissioning it was the scarcity of GARDIAN systems on the underside of the vehicle due to it's dependence on defence frigates and corvettes. Most likely Fel had simply purchased the old war-bird believing it to be cheap way of drawing in massive fire power for smash and grab missions or intimidation. Indeed considering the ramshackle state of most 'battle-ready' ships within the Terminus systems even the other PMC's it would be an able force against all but a state of the art ship.

Unfortunately the _Illuminator_ was a mere nineteen years old and in that short time had been feverishly upgraded time and again to the point where little more than the superstructure was original and even that had been altered somewhat.

The ship's sensors and awareness aids were sufficient that they could detect and flag the energy build up of the Kav's lightning reflexes could effectively dodge the GARDIAN batteries. With practiced coordination Weapons Officer Veen was able to unleash a full barrage of it's own lasers and deploy disruptor torpedoes which the _Regent_ was only just able to deflect though in order to do so they had over taxed their point defences and barriers.

The Illuminator swung directly upwards and flying in an ungainly belly-forwards manner.

"Firing." Veen reported quickly as he pressed the emergency fire button rather than waste time on an unnecessary firing-solution. A hypersonic round fired at point blank range tore through the middle of the ship, tearing apart the spinal cannon and shattering the craft in half and denaturing it's circuitry.

"Target destroyed, zero damage." Kav reported as they came within range of the Relay."

"Good job people." Parikh said as tangles of energy threw the ship towards the succour of the Citadel.

The craft came towards the massive arms of the large implacable station before quickly swooping in to land at the large central ring of the Presidium. For all of them it was a moment of great triumph. To Gadon it was a return to his birthplace and aside from New-Albion, the only home he had ever known. To Addison it was similarly home and a place to feel safe. Most of all though it was, to Hagrah the end of a journey, to secure the safety of Alliance Space.

Staring at a flickering hologram of it in the cargo hold he was with his own thoughts. Most propaganda addled batarians would love the idea of conquering earth, resisting only at merely joining the Council as opposed to dominating it. In his opposition of that idea he ran for it's sheltering arms and it's Free-Press which was heard across the galaxy, where better to gather the forces of the Citadel Races against the attack on Votum or at least to avoid the otherwise inevitable war to ensue.

"Hagrah?" A strongly accented human voice said as Addison entered the room with a small knock. Amongst the dark of the room and the dark of her armour little more than the glow of the suit and the luminous dye in her her.

"Yes?" he said simply as he turned to face her with a respectfully leftward tilt of his head.

"Why did you go to all this trouble just to protect the Alliance?" She said as she sat on a crate besides him.

He looked downwards in thought for a moment as he thought. "Because I won't let a pointless land-dispute kill billions of innocents."

"Wow…that's very noble." She responded with an admiring look on her pale and scarred face.

"Well it seemed like a good idea at the time." Hagrah responded modestly.

"Addison, Hagrah, we're preparing to disembark." Gadon said over his comns implant from the airlock.

The shuttle bay was a dark utilitarian room containing a few equipment lockers around the. Removing a pair of Locusts and accompanying carnifex's from storage he handed them to Addison and Hagrah who gave the foreign weapon an admiring look. Gadon however had used the onboard supplies to rather extensively modify his own pistol to a level nine weapons rating, fitting level five magazine and penetration modules to it's already potent design.

They quickly buckled into the shuttle and flew out of the _Illuminator_'s shuttle bay.

In the twists and tangles of countless buildings Korian had snaked his way up the barren, airless exterior of the Citadel Tower which was still in the process of being refurbished after the geth attack. Sneaking past a number of guards and contractors he finaly clambered to the lonely top of a series of fragile scaffolds and drew out the cumbersome M-98 Black Widow, as it had been termed and modified with a large series of intertial dampeners in the stock of the weapon and to stop the weapon shattering his arm when he fired it. He waited atop the lonely spire, knowing that Gadon and company would have to pass this way to get to the Citadel and thanks to a VI in the traffic sensor system's it would tag any vehicle registered to them and flag it on his scope.

"Sorry we can't see the sights Hagrah but I want to get you to the Council as soon as possible." Gadon explained as he quickly weaved in and out of traffic at a dangerous speed well in excess of C-Sec protocol. Not that he was bound by it anymore.

"I'm sure you'd enjoy it though, we have dinner, dancing I hear they just opened up this great place called Purg-" Addison's comment was cut quickly short by a powerful impact.

Korian saw the shot coming up according to the Widow's specially fitted targeting computer to compensate for spin. He waited for the perfect moment as the Red X4M shuttle passed into view and a targeting scanner identified it to Gadon. He had keenly studied the ship's specifications and found the exact right spot to fire, right between the secondary heat exchange and the secondary CPU hub which would tear apart the Eezo core and power cells.

He fired and a millisecond later he saw it tear into the ship at hypersonic speeds. He felt the weapon kick into his arm and despite custom padding, genetic modification and a naturally sturdy physique he still felt a massive bruise that ran deep into his muscle and left a painful swelling. Despite the massive energy it outputted thanks to the vacuum of space none of the workers bellow had heard a thing of it's usual thunderclap nor seen the usual contrail it's projectile would have left in atmosphere.

Emergency warning lights cast the interior in a deep red whilst a half dozen warning lights flashed on. Atmosphere was venting, structural integrity was compromised and the eezo core was failing.

"We've been hit!" Hagrah reported with fear.

Within the tumbling cockpit Gadon was strangely calm. "Hold on I'm going to put her down." He ordered as he deftly manipulated the flickering controls of the ship.

"I don't think you have a choice!" Addison shouted as she gripped deeply into the armrests out of fear.

She was right and he knew it, their altitude was dropping quickly and against the twisting effects of the spinning citadel and the numerous mass effect fields in place it was growing harder and harder to control the craft via it's weak and damaged micro-thrusters. Status reports showed that the majority of the rear of the craft was either damaged beyond repair or actually separate from the reminder of the shuttle in general.

And then he saw it off in the distance, the thirty third floor viewing deck of the Presidium financial district's now closed down Agri-Mass grocery store as he recalled it from the day of the geth incursion, a large and often empty room with a large enough window for them to punch through.

"What are you doing!" Hagrah yelped as he saw them rapidly pitching towards the tower.

Before he could get an answer the craft smashed sideways through the large viewport and scraping across the metastasis floor, stripping away paint and scratching and twisting metal. It slammed into cheap though as he recalled comfortable furniture as it was pulled towards them by venting atmosphere for a moment before the emergency seals activated as planned.

The hatches would not open forcing him to shoot out the specially fitted artificial sapphire-laminate windshield. He crawled out gingerly past the tiny cubes of the sapphire windshield, specially designed not to break into dangerous shards.

A pair of patrolling C-Sec officers quickly ran into the room, pistols drawn at the beckoning of depressurisation alarms. They stopped dead when they saw a drell waving a Spectre badge at them, taken from his armour's utility belt.

"This is a Spectre Operation." Gadon reported as he marched towards them.

"Well then-" A surely young turian went to say before he noticed a blue coated bayonet sticking from his chest. Sliding the serated blade out of the dying man's waist Korian appeared behind his form as he fell to the floor, unable to move for sake of a severed spine.

A knife produced from his side was slashed across the other officer's jugular and out of his hand in a single, sleek stroke, causing him to fall thrashing in a spurt of red blood.

"Good day, Detective Gadon." Korian said simply as he levelled his shotgun at the drell.

"Oh no you don't." Addison proclaimed as she encircled a stray crate in an aura of biotic energy. By the time he could turn to see it he was met with it's hard metallic surface slamming into his faceplate and shoving him off his feet and into the tarp and plastic wrap of the construction gear in a heap of materials.

"That was strangely easy." Hagrah said as he drew his pistol and approached cautiously.

A hurtling helmet was his answer, striking the sturdy cartilage at the top of his head.

Leaping out of the mess Korian seemed graceful and poised despite his heavy armour and it's various equipment pouches. There was a large cut on his plated forehead which left a blood blue streak over his tattooed colony mark, a series of glyphs designed to designate turians of the Citadel 'colony.' The small eye that he could still open seemed keen and poised, little deadened by the pain of his injuries or the medi-gel in his system assuming he was using any. Many special-ops types had a habit of setting such systems to conscious command to let them fight unimpeded though often at the cost of succumbing to wounds that left them unconscious.

He went to stab Hagrah with the bayonet and had it slammed down and away from him with the flat of the batarian's palm. Unlike most of the Intelligence Ministry's senior officers Hagrah had direct front line experience, specifically as a part of the Special Intervention Unit's Orbital Parachute Recon division, an achievement few survived long enough to celebrate much less surpass.

The deflection was followed by a rapid flurry of palm strikes before the Turian could respond.

Before Korian could level his weapon Hagrah had already drawn his pistol and levelled it at the turian's head.

His finger was on the trigger and he watched the passive, defeated look in the turian's eye. I t was the same look Hagrah had given when Korian and that assassin captured him.

He remembered looking over to Nyatta as she struggled in vain against the knife buried into her chest and then being gripped by talonned hands. The barrel of a pistol looked him in the face with Korian looking over it.

"So…" Hagrah said slowly as he savoured the moment. "any last words?" There was a grim look on his face, he didn't truly enjoy being here, presiding over another man's execution. He knew his death wouldn't bring Tesul or Banik back to him but he had to pay for all the pain he'd caused.

"No, none…Erton" Korian responded his voice was cold and according to Gadon's onboard scanners he wasn't particularly upset or annoyed. Such a lack of emotion was disconcertingly in line with the reactions of a sociopath.

"I trusted you Korian, all those years helping you, making your intelligence career and this is how you repay me?" Hagrah responded in a quietly shaking voice as he pressed the weapon right up to Korian's forehead, behind the activation threshold of his barriers. In happier times Hagrah had been the Spectre's contact in the Hegemony leaking information out to the Citadel. When he had prepared to leave he trusted Korian with setting up the arrangements. That mistake had cost Nyatta T'Quinn her life.

"Hagrah no!" Gadon commanded as he came up behind him, weapons holstered.

"You're a police officer, this is justice!" Hagrah responded desperately, miserably.

"No, this isn't justice he still deserves a fair trial." Gadon responded.

"He won't get a fair trial, there's too much political bullshit around a Spectre."

"I'll lean as hard as I have to, he **will** be trialled and punished fairly." Gadon promised. He approached slowly according to his armour's programs, relayed into his visor Hagrah was experiencing extremes anxiety and emotional stress.

Not looking away from Korian he spoke again, his voice was still ragged he backed up a few steps.

"Restrain him." Hagrah finally said as he stepped back.

Gadon removed a pair of restraint bands and bound Korian's hands behind his back.

The flashing of C-Sec sirens through the transparent slits of the windows shined over Korian's stoney face as he heard their radio chatter. He was captured.


	13. Chapter 13: Tipping the Scales

The Citadel courts had an air of pageantry to them. As a Citadel born citizen the Hierarchy had turned Korian over to their judicial process. As a Spectre he was beyond the grip of the usual courts and instead was to be trialled directly by the Council.

The room was darkly lit with only a pair of old asari spectres serving as guards over Korian who sat with bound wrists and ankles within a state of the art force field platform to keep him securely contained. His expensive and well made armour was gone, replaced instead with bright orange prisoner garb which was lined with high visibility strips. Their viewing box sat on a small platform that extended up from the high drop below-another security measure to prevent escape.

Sitting in a viewing box diagonal from him was the Council, all four of them Udina included. Protected behind layers of bullet proof glass and mass effect fields.

Across from them in a similar box sat Gadon, Addison and Hagrah. They had been sat there for tedious hours as the experts were called up via hologram, Doctor Cybil's evidence was re-examined and reinforced by Korian and the data gleamed from his hard suit and Omni tool as well as the information on Hagrah's OSD. The Batarian himself was observing them raptly. This was his day, the one moment where all he had lost all he had abandoned would come to be worth something.

"Verpine Korian you are charged with abduction of a foreign citizen, high treason and attempted genocide how do you plead?" Councillor Sparatus enquired.

"Guilty." Korian said simply and without any hint of actual regret. He sat there still and almost regal on his small moulded metal bench despite his restraints.

The speakers in the Council's box were muted as they debated quickly, Udina was, predictably, pressing for the maximum punishment whilst Councillors Sparatus and Valern countered more gently. Tevos, normally the spokeswoman of the quartet was quiet and listening intently. A moment later the human Councillor activated the speaker controls.

"It is this Council's decision" He said, recalling his time as a member of the Alliance Supreme Court. " that you will be placed on the Sera maximum security penal colony indefinitely and with no chance of release." Udina concluded.

"Okay." He responded unfazed.

Sera, a distant world orbiting an old red star. After years of battle with the rachni and then it's pollution by the victorious krogan's colonies and then the damage incurred during the ensuing rebellions it's blood red sky was still stained by toxins and pollution. A few prefab shelters on a cold, storm, wracked continent held their most dangerous prisoners. Rogue asari commandoes, blackwatch agents and STG agents with a small isle with a large mansion reserved for the slim few fallen Spectres, of which Korian was the only one alive.

"That's it?" Hagrah whispered as he saw his tormentor's platform lower back down into the holding pens bellow. "So many murders, torture, nearly starting a war, and this is what he gets."

"Well, as a Spectre we can't charge him for things like murder or torture." Gadon explained as he leaned over, to the surly batarian, his onboard sensors relaying information to suggest he was still experiencing emotional distress. Hagrah did not answer him.

"He'll be living the rest of his life alone and with nothing to do, I doubt he'll be too happy." Addison whispered to him as their viewing box began to turn towards the Council's own.

"Barron-Colonel Erton Hagrah" Councillor Tevos began with the ageless, superior tone of an asari Matriarch.

"Yes." he replied simply and without standing. He remembered all of the lectures on courtly etiquette and high class decorum that he had been forced to sit through as a child but he just didn't care enough to rise at this point.

"It is the Council's decision that, in light of your actions you be made a full citizen of the Citadel." Valern answered.

"Thank you." he responded in a hollow voice. His wife was dead, his son was dead, he was exiled from his home and he would probably never see any of his old friends again. Citizenship was not a worthy trade.

"Councillors." Gadon interrupted as he stood from his chair. They turned and looked at him, surprised at his calm before one of the supreme powers in the galaxy. "What is to be done about Votum, according to Hagrah these people will have been modified beyond detection?" He added as he deactivated the small, holographic 'lens' covering his right eye to enable him to stare properly at them.

"We will be dispatching you to Votum in order to root them out." Tevos answered.

"We have reported the information to the Votum Governors but their colonial police is hardly up to the task." Sparatus explained grimly as he thought of his brother on the imperilled world. As one of the few worlds that had managed to evolve dextero-amino and levo-amino life it had become one of the few planets the Council would grant joint colony rights to and being so close to the Salarian territories their request to join was taken above the Alliance's.

"Yes but what about the batarians themselves?" Gadon asked as he leaned against a rail. "Now that we know they're planning to invade Alliance Space surely we should launch a pre-emptive strike."

"Agreed." Hagrah of all people said as he stood from his chair in his deep blue armour. "Now is the perfect time to liberate my people after the loss of the traverse we could never stop the Council Fleets." He explained as he recalled his last look at the logistics centres of Kar'Shan before his departure.

"Now that we know their strategy we have no reason to admit them to the council." Tevos explained.

"That won't stop them rallying the Terminus systems against humanity, the entire Attican Traverse could be lost!" Udina protested.

"That is an exclusively human affair." Sparatus responded turning to his human Colleague.

"Don't give me that bullshit!" Udina retorted angrily. "Millions of humans could be killed or enslaved if the batarians get a hold of them." He added with a snarl.

"Your people **chose** to live there they will live with the consequences." Sparatus countered.

"I-" Udina was halted by a single raised hand from Tevos.

"All in favour to halt this meeting." She interjected in wilful defiance of the human.

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

Udina bitterly held his tongue as their viewing box moved back to the access hatch and they disappeared beyond it.

"I told you there was too much politics for a fair trial." Hagrah said as he barged past the drell, his muscular six foot form nearly forced the shorter and slimmer man off balance. Gadon gave him a hard look as he walked by but he knew well why he was angry. From the speech he had gathered that freeing his people was the entire goal of his defection. To have all that suffering mean nothing must had been heartbreaking.

"I'm sure he'll get over it." Addison responded as they walked out after him.

The Foyer at the base of the tower was large and replete with dignitaries, lawyers, businessmen and c-sec officers, many of the latter in the newer, better armoured fatigues that had been bought in to better protect humanoid officers on patrol without resorting to more intimidating combat armour. A number of statues lined the walls, each of them lined with great members of the Citadel's history, from massive golden effigies of Captain T'Janni, discover of the Citadel, Ambassador Detto the first Salarian Councillor and General Cassida the turian equivalent at the back hall designed to awe incoming visitors. Udina's structure was being formed quickly beside them as a show of unity though it was clear he wielded less power than the other Councillors.

Other smaller statues also marked the walls, Councillor Iustum the creator of C-Sec and standing in place of Harkin the first human officer was old Bailey, the first human Commander in C-Sec. Under hasty construction was a monument Shepard the First human Spectre and hero of the geth wars now sullied a memory sullied by Cerberus hands, and a vaporised star system four months ago.

"We aren't really going to let the batarians attack the Traverse are we?" Addison pondered as they walked out through a large hatch at the base of the station.

"Well not intentionally but stopping an entire fleet won't exactly be easy."

"I have a feeling being a Spectre never is." Hagrah replied as he appeared outside the hatch of the Citadel Tower with a bright red militia grade Kodiak in view. It wasn't as swift and stylish as Gadon's old car but it was much more resilient and much to Hagrah's relief came with enough space to sit in without having to bunch up. Moreover it had been extensively modified by Vas Torvos shipworks, a quarian tuning firm. It possessed multicore cyclonic barrier shielding, a carbon nano-tube under-hull with modular silaris armour plating and an advanced cyber warfare suite all crammed in around an overpowered engine and contragravitic eezo assembly.

"How did you get a hold of this?" Gadon responded as he ran admiringly to the vehicle.

"I have a lot of contacts and a lot more private accounts on the Citadel." He responded as he opened the rear door and clambered into it. Gadon ignored the fact that for years a batarian agent had been coming and going on intelligence missions.

"Private accounts, how much money do you have?" Addison responded as she hopped into the passenger compartment with him.

"Enough to retire to Ilium if I wanted." He responded with a vague though cocky tone.

Gadon however was far too pleased with his new toy to pay much attention to their conversation.

He flew low and rapidly to cut the traffic as he crossed the massive ring of the presidium to reach the docks of the _Illuminator_. All the while his face was lit up as he quickly played with the crisp, high definition controls and felt the shift of the mass effect field as he threw it around turns and over, or under the bridges of across the large presidium lake.

The docking procedure with the ship itself was fairly sedate as he explained the day to Parikh before being allowed to park the shuttle.

"It would seem it's just you now." Lord General Damalik said as he materialised before Tethena within the quarters of _Fareot One_.

"Not necessarily, I have a few contacts within the Sera Patrol Board I might be able to get him ou-"

"No need, I have already arranged for his transport shuttle to be lost in transit." Damalik responded in a blasé fashion. The turian had been a consummate professional, a respectable trait but he knew that meant he could almost certainly be bought in exchange for a lenient sentence. Damalik's efforts to take hold of Earth or a Council seat but the plan could quite well carry over into the Terminus systems which wouldn't trust a Council answer over their batarian sponsors and would happily force the primates from the Attican Traverse, a victory in itself.

"Very well then but I'm going to want an increase in pay, call it a…hazard bonus." Tethena responded as she reclined in her chair and steepled her fingers.

"Acceptable, but the consequences of failure will be **quite **severe." Damalik responded before shutting off the vid-com.

Jortham, the system Votum resided in was directly connected to the relay network, which both the _Illuminator_ and the _Fareot _where now speeding towards.


End file.
